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the series I have examined is concerned. Probably he had a finer series of American specimens, 

 and I better examples from Europe than from America. 



As the breeding haunts of the Pine-Grosbeak are so far removed from any except most 

 sparsely inhabited localities (for it breeds only in the extreme high north), but little is known of 

 its habits during the summer season. I have never found it breeding, and can only speak from 

 personal observation of its habits during the winter season, when it visits the neighbourhood of 

 houses, and is eminently unsuspicious and easy to obtain ; but my friend Mr. Robert Collett, of 

 Christiania, writes to me that " no one who has visited their breeding-haunts would ever venture 

 to indorse the usual verdict (based on their habits during winter), that it is a stupid bird. When 

 breeding they are, on the contrary, eminently cautious and wary; and I know from personal 

 experience how difficult it is to find its nest in the vast conifer-forests of the north, where this 

 species and the Waxwing breed. What has been termed stupidity must rather be set down as 

 extreme trustfulness and an utter ignorance of any danger in the vicinity of man. In their 

 forest-homes food is scarce ; and in the lonely wilderness they have not learned to suspect danger 

 on the part of men ; but on the approach of winter they find, near human habitations, a super- 

 fluity of food, and their usual cautiousness is exchanged for a carelessness and a desire to make 

 the best of the feast spread before them, which, however, only lasts a comparatively short time ; 

 for they soon learn to know that man is their natural enemy. I may name, as a proof of how 

 little they can measure or judge of danger, a circumstance that happened to myself when 

 catching a pair, which I kept alive for some time, and finally sent them to the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, in 1866. I was in a grove near Christiania in November 1864, 

 where a lot of snares were set; and whilst there a flock of Pine-Grosbeaks flew down to the 

 grove, and within the space of a few minutes all were snared but two, which kept hopping about 

 close to their unfortunate companions. I wanted to get them alive, and withdrew a short 

 distance ; and the next moment one of them was fast in a snare, whilst the other was fruitlessly 

 endeavouring to get into a snare in which one of his deceased companions was hanging dead. 

 I proceeded to take out the dead bird in order to allow him to follow the bent of his inclinations ; 

 and whilst thus employed, he took the opportunity of getting into a spare snare not two paces 

 from me. I took him out and took the two birds home, finding them so tame that as I fed them 

 the same day with rowan berries they sat quietly on my hand and made no attempt to fly away ; 

 but after a few days' time they became much more shy." 



I have frequently met with the Pine-Grosbeak during the winter, and can fully confirm all 

 that Mr. Collett says respecting their extreme tameness ; in fact, they are frequently caught by 

 the boys in Sweden with a noose at the end of a stick, whilst they are busy feeding greedily on 

 the berries of the mountain-ash, of which they are extremely fond. I observed that those I met 

 with in the forests of New Brunswick during the winter were much more shy than those I used 

 to see near habitations, and I frequently found them by no means so easy to shoot. Whilst 

 flying from tree to tree they uttered a low, plaintive, and rather melancholy whistle. Mr. Collett 

 informs me that the song, which is uttered by both sexes, but more frequently by the male, is 

 feeble, but pleasing, somewhat resembling that of the Bullfinch, but sweeter and more varied. 



The mode of nidification of this bird was unknown until discovered in 1855 by the late 

 Mr. Wolley ; and the particulars were first published by Mr. Hewitson in the following year 



