200 
SYLYIADiE. 
were entirely filled with insects, chiefly minute Coleoptera ; and the 
fifth contained seeds of two or three kinds in addition to frag- 
ments of stone. 
I shall transcribe some notes on this species just as they were made. 
Dec., 1839. A regulus, in the collection of Mr. B. Ball, of Dublin, 
obtained in that neighbourhood, attracted my attention by exhibiting a 
white streak continuously from one eye to the other, and which is con- 
sequently interposed between the black band bounding the crest and 
the bill ; the crest was of the ordinary brilliant colour. On my return 
home, a specimen of my own, killed near Belfast, was examined, and 
displayed a similar white band, but not so conspicuously, between the 
eyes : in all other characters these birds agreed with the R. cristatus of 
authors. Several others were examined, but none exhibited the 
white which possibly may be peculiar to adult males, as the brightness 
of the crests in both individuals possessing it, indicated them to be : 
the sex of all those referred to was unknown. At the end of Feb- 
ruary, 1844, I obtained another specimen with the white marking, that 
proved on dissection to be a male. None of the authors, to whose works 
I have referred, describe these white bands in the R. cristatus. Tem- 
minck, remarks that it is “ sans aucun indice de bandes blanchatres,” 
vol. i. p. 229 : in which Jenyns follows him, p. 113; Montagu (Orn. 
Diet.) ; Selby (p. 231) ; Yarrell, Macgillivray, Jardine (in Brit. Birds), 
say nothing of the white, disposed as above mentioned. The last author, 
however, when comparing R. cristatus with R. reguloides, in his edition 
of Wilson’s American Ornithology, (vol. i. p. 127), incidentally observes, 
that ** the white streak above the eye is better marked ” in the latter 
than in the former species : — the extent of the white line is not men- 
tioned. Wilson, in describing the American bird, which he regarded as 
R. cristatus , remarked, that “ a line of white passed round the frontlet, 
extending over and beyond the eye on each side,” ib. p. 130. This is 
just the case in the individual to which attention has been particularly 
called, but the various differential characters in the North American 
and European birds are considered by Sir. Wm. Jardine, and other 
ornithologists who have compared them, as decidedly separating the 
species. A specimen of R. cristatus, from Italy — being one of a large 
collection of admirably stuffed birds from that country, presented by 
George Lenox Conyngham, Esq., to the Belfast Museum — exhibits 
the white marking. 
