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PURPLE FINCH. 



respect for other authorities has prevented me from making 

 this alteration. 



When these birds are taken in their crimson dress, and 

 kept in a cage till they moult their feathers, they uniformly 

 change to their present appearance, and sometimes never 

 after receive their red colour. They are also subject, if well 

 fed, to become so fat as literally to die of corpulency, of which 

 I have seen several instances; being at these times subject to 

 something resembling apoplexy, from which they sometimes 

 recover in a few minutes, but oftener expire in the same space 

 of time. 



The female is entirely without the red, and differs from the 

 present only in having less yellow about her. 



These birds regularly arrive from the north, where they 

 breed, in September, and visit us from the south again early 

 in April, feeding on the cherry blossoms as soon as they 

 appear. Of the particulars relative to this species, the reader 

 is referred to the account in Vol. I., already mentioned. 



The individual figured in the plate measured six inches and 

 a quarter in length, and ten inches in extent; the bill was 

 horn coloured ; upper parts of the plumage, brown olive, 

 strongly tinged with yellow, particularly on the rump, where 

 it was brownish yellow ; from above the eye, backwards, passed 

 a streak of Avhite, and another more irregular one from the 

 lower mandible ; feathers of the crown, narrow, rather long, 

 and generally erected, but not so as to form a crest ; nostrils 

 and base of the bill, covered with reflected brownish hairs ; 

 eye, dark hazel ; wings and tail, dark blackish brown, edged 

 with olive ; first and second row of coverts, tipt with pale 

 yellow; chin, Avhite ; breast, pale cream, marked with pointed 

 spots of deep olive brown ; belly and vent, white ; legs, brown. 

 This bird, with several others marked nearly in the same 

 manner, -was shot 25th April, while engaged in eating the 

 buds from the beech tree. 



