FEMALE PINE BULLFINCH. 291 



blackish, margined with whitish exteriorly and widely at tip ; the lower 

 covei'ts are whitish gray ; quills blackish, primaries margined with pale 

 greenish orange, secondaries and tertials with broad white exterior 

 margins : the tail is three and three-quarter inches long, blackish, the 

 feathers with narrow pale edges ; feet dusky, nails blackish. 



In the young female the head and rump are tinged with reddish. 

 The male represented and most accurately described by Wilson, is not 

 adult, but full one year old ; at which period, contrary to the general 

 law of nature, it is the brightest, as was first stated by Linnd, though 

 his observation has since been overlooked or unjustly contradicted. In 

 the adult male, the parts that were crimson in the immature bird, 

 exhibit a fine reddish orange, the breast and belly being also of that 

 color, but paler ; the bars of the wings, tinged with rose in the young, 

 become pure white. 



We have nothing to add to Wilson's history of this bird. Although 

 after the example of Temminck and others, we place this species at the 

 head of the Bullfinches, we cannot avoid remarking that its natural 

 aflSnities connect it most intimately with the Crossbills, being allied to 

 them closely in its habits and in its form, plumage, general garb, and 

 even in its anomalous change of colors. The bill however, precisely 

 that of a Bullfinch, induces us to leave it in that genus, between which 

 and the Crossbills it forms a beautiful link : the obtuse point of the 

 lower mandible, but especially the small, porrect, setaceous feathers 

 covering the nostrils, as in these latter, eminently distinguish it from 

 all others of its own genus. These characters induced Cuvier to pro- 

 pose it as a subgenus, under the name of OorytJius, and Vieillot as an 

 entirely distinct genus, which he first named Pinicola, but has since 

 changed it to Strohihphaga. These authors have of course been fol- 

 lowed by the German and English ornithologists of the new school, who 

 appear to consider themselves bound to acknowledge every genus pro- 

 posed, from whatever quarter, or however minute and variable the 

 characters on which it is based. 



