FINCH. 89 



and though they carried them on their backs 1000 miles, as well as 

 paid £20 duty for such a number, yet, upon the whole, it answered 

 to sell these birds at five shillings a piece : the chief breeding place 

 is Inspruck, and its environs, from whence they are sent to Constan- 

 tinople, and other parts of Europe. 



How often they breed in a state of nature is not said, but that 

 they do several times a year in confinement is manifest, from an 

 account received from Bath many years since, that two Canary Birds 

 paired in the month of February, 1783, from which time, to the 

 first week in December, the hen had laid thirty-six eggs in eight 

 nests ; two of them were broken by accident ; seven times she bred 

 them up so as to be caged off, and had, at the time of writing, two 

 eggs in her ninth nest, whilst the cock fed three young ones in the 

 same cage.* 



A,— Serins de Mozambique, PI. enl. 364. 1. 2. Gen. Syn. iii. 296. A. 



This is about four inches and a half in length. Bill and legs 

 pale ; upper parts brown ; the feathers of the wings and tail with 

 pale edges ; under parts and rump yellow ; between the bill and eye, 

 and over the latter yellow; under the eye a yellow streak. Male 

 and female much alike. 



These were brought from Mozambique, on the east coast of 

 Africa. 



51. —SERIN FINCH. 



Fringilla Serinus, Ind. Orn. i. 454. Lin. i. 320. Gm. Lin. i. 908. Kramer, 36S. 7. 

 Shaw's Zool. ix. 473. Tern. Man. d'Orn. 214. Id. Ed. ii. 357. 



* Similar to this is a fact, recorded in an Evening Paper : — " Mr. J. Watson, Distiller, 

 George-street, Sunderland, has a young Canary Bird of last year, building her fifth 

 nest. In the first nest were four eggs, which pioduced four birds; second, eight eggs, 

 eight birds ; third, seven eggs, seven birds; and the fourth, six eggs, seven birds, one of 

 the eggs producing twins." — London Chronicle, August 23, 1816. 



VOL. VI. N 



