RICE BUNTING. 201 



ear can hardly separate them. Nevertheless the general 

 effect is good ; and, when ten or twelve are all singing on 

 the same tree, the concert is singularly pleasing. I kept 

 one of these hirds for a long time, to observe its change of 

 colour. During the whole of April, May, and June, it sang 

 almost continually. In the month of June, the colour of the 

 male begins to change, gradually assimilating to that of the 

 female, and before the beginning of August it is difficult to 

 distinguish the one from the other, both being then in the 

 dress of fig. 2. At this time, also, the young birds are so 

 much like the female, or rather like both parents, and the 

 males so different in appearance from what they were in 

 spring, that thousands of people in Pennsylvania, to this day, 

 persist in believing them to be a different species altogether ; 

 while others allow them, indeed, to be the same, but con- 

 fidently assert that they are all females — none but females, 

 according to them, returning in the fall ; what becomes of 

 the males they are totally at a loss to conceive. Even Mr 

 Mark Catesby, who resided for years in the country they 

 inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined by 

 dissection great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated 

 his experiment the succeeding year, lest he should have been 

 mistaken, declares that he uniformly found them to be 

 females. These assertions must appear odd to the inhabi- 

 tants of the eastern States, to whom the change of plumage in 

 these birds is familiar, as it passes immediately under their eye ; 

 and also to those who, like myself, have kept them in cages, 

 and witnessed their gradual change of colour.* That accurate 

 observer, Mr William Bartram, appears, from the following 



* The beautiful plumage of the male represented on the plate is that 

 during the breeding-season, and is lost as soon as the duties incumbent 

 thereon are completed. In this we have a striking analogy with some 

 nearly allied African Fringillidce. 



The genus Dolyconyx has been made by Mr Swainson to contain this 

 curious and interesting form : by that gentleman it is placed in the 

 aberrant families of the Sturnidce. — Ed. 



