Genus LIGURINUS. 
Passer apud Brisson, Orn. iii. p. 190 (1760). 
Loxia apud Linneeus, Syst. Nat. i. p. 304 (1766). 
Chloris apud Cuvier, Leg. d’Anat. Comp. tab. ii. (1800). 
Fringilla apud Meyer, Vog. Liv- u. Esthl. p. 76 (1815). 
Lnigurinus, Koch, Baier. Zool. i. p. 230 (1816). 
Serinus apud Boie, Isis, 1822, p. 555. 
Coccothraustes apud Stephens, in Shaw’s Gen. Zool. xiv. p. 87 (1826). 
Chlorospiza apud Bonaparte, Comp. List, p. 30 (1838). 
Tue Greenfinch and its allies have very generally been separated, and, it appears to me, with 
good reason; for although they are on the one side closely allied to the Grosbeaks, and on the 
other to the Sparrows, they form a very fairly separable group. 
This genus is represented in the Palearctic and Ethiopian Regions, one species only being 
found in the Western Palearctic Region. The Greenfinches frequent woods, groves, and 
gardens, usually in the lowlands, and are residents, collecting together in flocks in the autumn 
and wandering about in the fields in search of food. ‘They feed on insects, seeds, fruits, &c., 
chiefly on seeds, except in the spring and early summer, and construct a tolerably well-made 
cup-shaped nest of fibrous roots, twigs, dry bents, moss, hair, &c., which they place on a tree or 
in a bush, and deposit several bluish-white eggs marked with purplish grey, blackish brown, 
and reddish brown. ‘They have a very poor song; and their call-note is peculiarly harsh and 
screechy. 
Ligurinus chloris, the type of the genus, has the bill rather short, straight, conical, nearly 
as broad as high at the base, compressed towards the tip, acute, with a scarcely perceptible 
notch at the point; nostrils basal, concealed by stiff feathers directed forwards ; wings moderately 
long, rather pointed, the first quill obsolete, the second, third, and fourth nearly equal, the 
third, if any thing, the longest; tail rather short, emarginate; legs rather short, the tarsus 
covered in front with four large and three inferior scutelle; toes moderate, claws arched, acute, 
laterally grooved. 
