Cooper's communication, and was supposed for a little while to be the only representa- 

 tive of the species known to naturalists ; but other specimens soon became available for 

 the purposes of science. Thus Bonaparte, who first figured the interesting acquisition, 

 in 1828, states that at this date he had examined two other specimens, besides Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's, which had been obtained early in the spring on Lake Athabasca, and 

 were preserved in the Leadbeater collection in London ; one of them serving him' for the 

 elaborate description which he gives in his "American Ornithology." Soon after this, 

 we find Sir John Richardson's allusion to specimens sent to the authors of the "Fauna 

 Boreali- America" by Mr. Prudens, Chief Trader at Carlton House; and this author 

 remarks that the bird is a common inhabitant of the maple groves of the Saskatchewan 

 region, — a circumstance from which its Cree Indian name Seesebasquit-pethaysish, or 

 Sugar-bird, is derived. A very characteristic likeness of the male bird of natural size, 

 drawn and colored in William Swainson's well-known style, accompanies the notice to 

 which I refer; the remainder of the account in the work just named consisting of the 

 junior author's fanciful speculations on the quinary affinities of this remarkable Gros- 

 beak. His ingenuity brings him to the sage conclusion that the bird is related to certain 

 tenuirostral types, notwithstanding that it has one of the largest, stoutest, stockiest 

 bills to be found in the whole Fringilline assemblage. 



"Let us turn another page of written history respecting the subject of the present 

 notice. The statements of fact I have made are all staple accounts, copied by each 

 successive compiler with no less scrupulous exactitude than I have myself exhibited. 

 Quite a fresh and interesting chapter was added by J. K. Townsend, who contributed 

 his observations to Audubon's work, under date of 'Columbia River, May 27, 1836.' 

 He corrected two grave errors which had already cropped out, namely, respecting the 

 sexual similarity in plumage, and concerning the wrong notion that the bird sings only 

 at evening, as implied in the term vespertina. His notice is worth transcribing, even 

 at this late day, so little further information have we acquired respecting the habits of 

 the Evening Grosbeak. 



"'The Evening Grosbeak,' says Townsend, 'is very numerous in the pine-woods at 

 this time. You can scarcely enter a grove of pines at any hour in the day without 

 seeing numbers of them. They are very unsuspicious and tame. . . . The accounts that 

 have been published respecting them by the only two authors to whom I have access, 

 Mr. Nuttall and Prince Bonaparte, are, I think, in many respects, incorrect. In the first 

 place, it is stated that they are retiring and silent during the day, and sing only on the 

 approach of evening. Here they are remarkably noisy during the whole of the day, 

 fi-om sunrise to sunset. They then retire quietly to their roosts in the summits of the 

 tall pines, and are not aroused until daylight streaks the east, when they come forth 

 to feed as before. Thus I have observed them here, but will not say but that at other 

 seasons and in other situations their habits may be different. They are now, however, 

 very near the season of breeding. . . . They appear fond of going in large bodies, and it 

 is rare to see one alone in a tree. They feed upon the seeds of the pine and other trees, 

 alighting upon large limbs, and proceeding by a succession of hops to the very extre- 

 mities of the branches. They eat, as well as seeds, a considerable quantity of the 

 larvae of the large black ant, and it is probable that it is to procure this food that 



