80 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
Family—FRINGILLID@:. Subfamily—FRINGILLINE. 
THE LINNET. 
Acanthis cannabina, LINN. 
REEDS throughout Europe south of lat. 64° in Scandinavia, and of lat. 59° in 
B East Russia; it is also resident in North-west Africa, the Canaries, and 
Madeira; eastward it extends to Turkestan. In Persia and North India a repre- 
sentative race replaces it, in which the general plumage is more ashy, and the 
breast of the male more scarlet in colouring. 
Excepting in the mountainous parts of Scotland, where it appears to be replaced 
by the Twite, the Linnet is pretty generally distributed throughout Great Britain ; 
it has not, however, been obtained from the Shetland Isles. 
The male Linnet in breeding plumage has a glossy crimson patch from the 
base of the upper mandible to the centre of the crown; remainder of head, nape, 
and sides of neck brown, with an ashy suffusion and darker mottling; back and 
wing-coverts ruddy golden-brown, broadly centred with dark brown; upper tail- 
coverts dark brown, with broad buffish-white borders; tail-feathers black, the outer 
web narrowly, and the inner web broadly bordered with white; flight feathers 
blackish, the primaries with a conspicuous white stripe on the outer webs, and 
with a broad whitish-ash border along a great part of the inner webs; secondaries 
bordered, especially along the outer webs, with ruddy golden-brown; lores, a streak 
above and another below the eye, buffish; ear-coverts and sides of face greyish; 
chin and throat buffish-white, with small brown streaks; throat and breast crimson, 
somewhat suffused with chestnut in youngish birds; belly buffish-white; flanks 
tawny brown, with darker centres to the feathers, and sometimes slightly tinted 
with rose-reddish; beak greyish horn-brown, paler at the base of the lower man- 
dible; feet brown; iris hazel. In captivity all crimson disappears from the plumage, 
and both beak and feet become paler and flesh-tinted. 
The female differs in the absence of all crimson colouring; the entire upper 
surface browner, with blackish centres to the feathers, the much more prominent 
streaking of the under surface, the decidedly broader crown and base of beak, and 
the considerably narrower white outer margins to the primaries and tail feathers. 
It also differs remarkably in the form of the wings the distinctions being precisely 
