3 36 FEMALE WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 
winged Crossbill, Lath. Syn. iii. p. 108, sp. 2; Id. Suppl. p. 148.—Dizxon, 
Voy. t. 20, p. 358, female.—Penn. Arct. Zool. ii. sp. 208.—MWy Collection, male, 
female, young, and middle-aged. 
LOXIA LEUCOPTERA,—GMELIN ? 
See vol. ii. p. 42. 
Te white-winged crossbill, first made known by Latham in 
his celebrated “Synopsis,” was subsequently introduced on his 
authority into all the huge compilations of the last century. 
Wilson gave us the first figure of it, which is that of the male, 
and promised a representation of the female, together with 
“such additional facts relative to its manners as he might be 
able to ascertain.” It is to fulfil Wilson’s engagement that we 
now give a correct figure of the other sex of this species, which 
we are also enabled to describe minutely, in all its different 
states of plumage. ‘This has never before been done, though 
Vieillot, since Wilson’s time, has compiled some account of 
its habits, described the female, and recently published a bad 
enough figure of the male in his “Galerie des Oiseaux.” 
The English name was bestowed by its discoverer, the 
scientific was imposed on it by the compiler Gmelin, who, 
like the daw in the fable, though with much better success, 
appropriated to himself the borrowed plumes of others, making 
Latham’s new species his own, by being the first to give them 
scientific names, which the discoverer himself was afterwards 
obliged to adopt in his “Index Ornithologicus.” In the pre- 
sent instance, however, he took the liberty of altering Gmelin’s 
name, most probably with the view of giving one analogous 
to that of Loxta curvirostra, and indicative of the remarkable 
form of the bill. That character having since been employed 
as generic, the propriety of Latham’s change has ceased to 
exist, and, in fact, the advantage is altogether on the side of 
Gmelin. We have therefore respected the right of priority, 
even in the case of an usurper. 
The female white-winged crossbill is five inches and three- 
quarters long, and nearly nine in extent; the bill is more than 
five-eighths long, of a dark horn-colour, paler on the edges: 
as is the case in the whole genus, it is very much compressed 
