FEMALE PINE BULLFINCH. 361 
coverts, whitish, shafted with dusky ; the wings are four and 
a half inches long, reaching beyond the middle of the tail ; 
the smaller coverts are similar to the back, cinereous, slightly 
tinged with orange; middle and larger, blackish, margined 
with whitish exteriorly and widely at tip; the lower coverts 
are whitish grey; quills, blackish, primaries margined with 
pale greenish orange, secondaries and tertials with broad 
white exterior margins; the tail is three and three-quarter 
inches long, blackish, the feathers with narrow pale edges ; 
feet, dusky; nails, blackish. 
In the young female, the head and rump are tinged with 
reddish. The male represented and most accurately described 
by Wilson is not adult, but full one year old ; at which period, 
contrary to the general law of nature, it is the brightest, as 
was first stated by Linné, though his observation has since 
been overlooked or unjustly contradicted. In the adult male, 
the parts that were crimson in the immature bird exhibit a 
fine reddish orange, the breast and belly being also of that 
colour, but paler; the bars of the wings, tinged with rose in 
the young, become pure white. 
We have nothing to add to Wilson’s history of this bird. 
Although, after the example of Temminck and others, we 
place this species at the head of the bullfinches, we cannot 
avoid remarking, that its natural affinities connect it most 
intimately with the crossbills, being allied to them closely in 
its habits and in its form, plumage, general garb, and even 
in its anomalous change of colours. ‘The bill, however, pre- 
cisely that of a bullfinch, induces us to leave it in that genus, 
between which and the crossbills it forms a beautiful link; 
the obtuse point of the lower mandible, but especially the 
small porrect, setaceous feathers covering the nostrils, as in 
these latter, eminently distinguish it from all others of its own 
genus. ‘These characters induced Cuvier to propose it as a 
subgenus under the name of Corythus, and Vieillot as an 
entirely distinct genus, which he first named Pinicola, but 
has since changed it to Strobilophaga. These authors have 
