FRINGILLINA. ty 
THE SERIN. 
Serfnus HoRTULANUS, K. L. Koch. 
The occurrence of the Serin in England was first recorded from 
the neighbourhood of Portsmouth (Naturalist, 1853, p. 20), by the 
Rev. W. Hazel; and subsequently, about eight examples have been 
obtained by bird-catchers in Sussex—most of them near Brighton ; 
one or two near London, two in Norfolk, one in Somersetshire, and 
one in Devon; while Mr. G. C. Swailes saw and heard a male singing 
near one of his aviaries containing Serins, outside Beverley on 
April 26th 1897. In Ireland one was taken near Dublin, on January 
2nd 1893. Almost all of these were noticed either in spring or in 
autumn ; and although the Serin is a very common cage-bird abroad 
and likely to be imported, yet, considering that it breeds no further 
off than Luxemburg, it is probably a genuine visitor to our shores. 
In Holland, where the Serin was formerly rare, it is now captured 
almost every autumn (Blaauw); it has wandered to Schleswig ; at 
least a dozen examples have been obtained on Heligoland ; and its 
northern breeding-range extends to Darmstadt and the upper portions 
of the Rhine and Moselle valleys. Southward, it is found—generally 
at the foot of mountains skirting the plains—throughout the greater 
part of Europe, and on both sides of the Mediterranean ; in Asia 
Minor it is resident and extremely abundant, and it has been 
traced to Sinai and Egypt. It visits the coast of Palestine in 
winter, but in the higher regions of that country the representative 
species is S. canonicus, a larger, paler and much yellower bird; 
while in the Lebanon, Taurus and other mountain ranges, reaching 
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