218 



lores dirty white ; ear-coverts brown, marked with buff ; cheeks dirty white, becoming clearer on the 

 sides of the neck ; back of the neck clear grey, somewhat marked with brown ; middle of the back and 

 scapulars brown, longitudinally marked with black and rufous brown ; lower portion of the back, rump, 

 and upper tail-coverts rich bay ; wing-coverts brown, edged with rufous, which again shades off into 

 fulvous ; quills and tail as in the male ; throat dirty white, marked with little spots of dark brown ; 

 chest and sides of the body rufous, with longitudinal streaks of dark reddish brown ; centre of the body 

 and under tail-coverts dull white ; under wing-coverts white, slightly tinged with brown. 



Young Male. Similar to the old female, but rather greyer in tint, especially down the centre of the crown; 

 the throat and upper breast whitish, mottled with rufous, and having a few, small, dark brown markings 

 on the upper part of the chest. 



Male in winter plumage. Distribution of colours as in the summer plumage, but everywhere much more 

 dingy ; the white crown nearly altogether obscured by dark brown markings ; the back and wing- 

 coverts dull brown, with very little rufous ; the rump and upper tail-coverts, as well as the throat and 

 cheeks, edged with fulvous white ; upper part of the breast, below the white gorget, marked with broad 

 brown lines. The spring plumage is assumed not by a direct moult, but by the wearing off of the 

 edgings to the feathers. 



Theee can be no doubt that tbe synonymic name of pityomis, by which this Bunting is known 

 in ornithological works, must give way to the older name bestowed by S. G. Gmelin in 1771. 

 " The species was first described," Lord Walden kindly informs us from an examination of the 

 works in question, " by the above-named author (I. c.) ; and Lepechin again described the bird in 

 the same volume a few pages further on (p. 486), after Gmelin, with a figure (tab. 25. fig. 1), but 

 gave no binomial title. Pallas (Zoogr. ii. p. 37) quotes Messerschmidt's title of E. passerina as a 

 synonym ; but Messerschmidt's work does not appear to have been published." 



A great deal of confusion has been promulgated with regard to the various names referred 

 by Prince Bonaparte and other writers to the present species. In an article by the last-named 

 author in the ' Revue et Magasin de Zoologie ' for 1857 (I. c.) some notes on the Buntings of 

 Europe are given, with a figure (pi. 7) of a bird called " Emberiza scotata, Bonomi," which the 

 Prince supposes to be the young male of Emberiza leucocephala, and which was captured near 

 Brescia, in Lombardy, and sent to him by M. Parzudaki. A full description of this specimen is 

 then given, which is faithfully reproduced by Dr. Bree (B. of Eur. iii. p. 36). We regret that 

 we cannot coincide with the opinion of either of the above-named naturalists ; for the description 

 'and figure differ in so many characteristic points from the Pine Bunting in any stage of plumage, 

 that we believe some other species has been mistaken for it. At the conclusion of the description 

 of the bird, Prince Bonaparte observes, " It is a known fact that this Bunting is also the E. 

 passerina of Messerschmidt ; E. albida, Blyth ; E. leucocephcda and dalmatica, Gm. ; and E. 

 sclavonica, Degland. It is probable that more adult males have formed the subjects of the 

 nominal species which has been dedicated to me under the name of E. bonapartii by M. 

 Barthelemy de la Pommeraie from a specimen taken at Marseilles, where it was living in a cage 

 in 1842." We may remark, with regard to these synonyms, that the name of E. passerina cannot 

 be found to have ever been published ; E. albida of Blyth refers to this species, and was named 

 from a specimen sent to the last-named gentleman from the Himalayas, beyond Simla, by Captain 



