68 
RICE BUNTING. 
fig. 2. At this time, also, the young birds are so much like the female, or 
rather like both parents, and the males so different in appearance from 
■what they were in spring, that thousands of people in Pennsylvania, to 
this day, persist in believing them to be a different species altogether. 
While others allow them indeed to be the same, but confidently assert 
that they are all females — none but females, according to them, return- 
ing in the fall ; what becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to 
conceive. Even Mr. Mark Catesby, who resided for years, in the 
country they inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined by 
dissection great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated his experi- 
ment the succeeding year, lest he should have been mistaken, declares 
that he uniformly found them to be females. These assertions must 
appear odd to the inhabitants of the Eastern States, to whom the change 
of plumage in these birds is familiar, as it passes immediately under 
their eye ; and also to those, who like myself, have kept them in cages, 
and witnessed their gradual change of color. That accurate observer, 
Mr. William Bartram, appears, from the following extract, to have 
taken notice of, or at least suspected this change of color in these birds 
more than forty years ago. "Being in Charleston," says he, " in the 
month of June, I observed a cage full of Rice-birds, that is of the yellow 
or female color, who were very merry and vociferous, having the same 
variable music with the pied or male bird, which I thought extraordinary, 
and observing it to the gentleman, he assured me that they were all of 
the male kind, taken the preceding spring ; but had changed their color, 
and would be next spring of the color of the pied, thus changing color 
with the seasons of the year. If this is really the case, it appears they 
are both of the same species intermixed, spring and fall." Without, 
however, implicating the veracity of Catesby, who, I have no doubt, 
believed as he wrote, a few words will easily explain why he was deceived. 
The internal organization of undomesticated birds of all kinds, under- 
goes a remarkable change, every spring and summer ; and those who 
wish to ascertain this point by dissection will do well to remember, that 
in this bird those parts that characterize the male arc, in autumn, no 
larger than the smallest pin's head, and in young birds of the first year 
can scarcely be discovered ; though in spring their magnitude in each is 
at least one hundred times greater. To an unacquaintance with this 
extraordinary circumstance I am persuaded has been owing the mistake 
of Mr. Catesby that the females only return in the fall ; for the same 
opinion I long entertained myself, till a more particular examination 
showed me the source of my mistake. Since that, I have opened and 
examined many hundreds of these birds, in the months of September 
and October, and, on the whole, have found about as many males as 
females among them. The latter may be distinguished from the former 
