CEDAR BIRD. ! j l 



clusters of eggs, and having the waxen appendages in full 

 perfection. The young birds do not receive them until the 

 second fall, when, in moulting time, they may be seen fully 

 formed, as the feather is developed from its sheath. I have 

 once or twice found a solitary one on the extremity of one of 

 the tail-feathers. The eye is of a dark blood colour; the legs 

 and claws, black ; the inside of the mouth, orange ; gap, 

 wide ; and the gullet capable of such distension as often to 

 contain twelve or fifteen cedar berries, and serving as a kind 

 of craw to prepare them for digestion. No wonder, then, that 

 this gluttonous bird, with such a mass of food almost continu- 

 ally in its throat, should want both the inclination and powers 

 for vocal melody, which would seem to belong to those only 

 of less gross and voracious habits. The chief difference in 

 the plumage of the male and female consists in the dulness 

 of the tints of the latter, the inferior appearance of the crest, 

 and the narrowness of the yellow bar on the tip of the 

 tail. 



Though I do not flatter myself with being able to remove 

 that prejudice from the minds of foreigners which has made 

 them look on this bird also as a degenerate and not a distinct 

 species from their own ; yet they must allow that the change 

 has been very great, very uniform, and universal all over 

 North America, where I have never heard that the European 

 species has been found ; or, even if it were, this would only 

 show more clearly the specific difference of the two, by proving 

 that climate or food could never have produced these differ- 

 ences in either when both retain them, though confined to the 

 same climate. 



But it is not only in the colour of their plumage that these 

 two birds differ, but in several important particulars in their 

 manners and habits. The breeding place of the European 

 species is absolutely unknown ; supposed to be somewhere 

 about the Polar Eegions ; from whence, in winter, they make 

 different, and very irregular excursions to various parts of 

 Europe; seldom advancing farther south than the north of 



