CEDAR-BIRD. Ill 



perfect in those on whom the marks are full and numerous. These 

 singular marks have been usually considered as belongmg to the 

 male alone, from the circumstance, perhaps, of finding female birds 

 without them. They are, however, common to both male and fe- 

 male. Six of the latter are now lying before me, each with large 

 and numerous chisters of eggs, and having the waxen appendages 

 in full perfection. The young birds do not receive them until the 

 second Fall, when, in moulting time they may be seen fully formed, 

 as the feather is developed from its sheath. I have once or twice 

 found a solitary one on the extremity of one of the tail feathers. 

 The eye is of a dark blood color; the legs and claws black; the 

 inside of the mouth orange; gap wide; and the gullet capable of 

 such distention as often to contain twelve or fifteen cedar berries, 

 and serving as a kind of craw to prepare them for digestion. No 

 wonder then that this gluttonous bird, with such a mass of food 

 almost continually in its throat, should want both the inclination 

 and powers for vocal melody, which would seem to belong to those 

 only of less gross and voracious habits. The chief difference in 

 the plumage of the male and female consists in the dullness of the 

 tints of the latter, the inferior appearance of the crest, and the nar- 

 rowness of the yellow bar on the tip of the tail. 



Tho I do not flatter myself with being able to remove that pre- 

 judice from the minds of foreigners, which has made them look 

 on this bird, also, as a degenerate and not a distinct species from 

 their own ; yet they must allow that the change has been very great, 

 very uniform, and universal, all over North America, where I have 

 never heard that the European species has been found ; or even if 

 it were, this would only shew more clearly the specific difference 

 of the two, by proving, that climate or food could never have pro- 

 duced these differences in either when both retain them, tho con- 

 fined to the same climate. 



But it is not only in the color of their plumage that these two 

 birds differ, but in several important particulars, in their manners 



