TWITE. 



525 



and they are taken tog-ether about London by the bird-catchers. A 

 variety has been given as the mountain linnet ; it has a twittering- note, 

 but has not been observed to sing-. 



Dr. Latham favoured us with the nest and eg-gs, which he received 

 out of Yorkshire. * Selby says it is generally found amid the tops 

 of the tallest heath, and is formed of moss and roots of plants mixed 

 with heather, and lined with finer heath and fibrous roots.* The egg 

 is the size of that of the linnet, of a blue-white, or bluish-green, faintly 

 spotted with purplish-red, or pale orange-brown, at the larger end. 



The female is said to want the red mark on the rump, and may 

 therefore be frequently mistaken for the common linnet before it has 

 thrown out the other red markings. It is possibly found in many 

 other parts of England in the winter season, but not generally distin- 

 guished from the linnet. 



Some doubts have been expressed by Bechstein, and other natu- 

 ralists, whether this might not prove to be a variety of the redpole, or 

 linnet. " It is remarked," says Temminck, " by M. Veillot, in the 

 Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Turin, speaking of the first edition 

 of this manual, 4 that I did not then know the subject of the present 

 article ; I have since been furnished, by the assistance of M. Boie, who 

 has travelled through a great part of Sweden and Norway, with many 

 important observations tending to confirm my former opinion, that this 

 forms a distinct species, and is not the same as the F. Flavirostris, which 

 is nothing else than a variety of the redpole (jP. Linaria), as I asserted 

 in the first edition ; this last is not, however, the Fringilla Jlavirostris 

 of Nilsson's Faun. Suec. 1. p. 140. 71, which is an exact description of 

 our bird. I believe that Pallas and Linnaeus have also the same spe- 

 cies in view, in their F. Flavirostvis ; but the descriptions of Retz, 

 Gmelin, and Latham, apply to the redpole. It is extremely difficult to 

 unravel the confusion and explain the numberless errors of compilers." 



This species inhabits the Arctic regions, and is very common in 

 Norway and Sweden, but is rare in Russia and the southern parts of 

 Germany. 



