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i’RINGILLIDvE. 
thorn berry, an operation requiring a strong exertion of the human jaw. On dis- 
section, I found one of these stones thus cracked in one of their stomachs, with the 
fresh kernel still in one half of the shell. A few hours after they were dead, I took 
a strong pair of scissors and a knife, using them as levers, to force open their hills, 
and found the muscle had so firmly contracted, that to effect my purpose I had to 
use a wedge ; a forcible proof, it will be allowed, of their strength. Their bills alone, 
however, are formed as a pair of nut-crackers , as the muscles of the neck, unlike 
those of the wood-peckers, are not strong. Not so with the wings, which are fur- 
nished with such strong muscles, that they could almost vie with the pigeon in 
strength and rapidity of flight. They would, therefore, unlike many of our birds of 
passage, be well calculated for distant migrations.” * 
Dubourdieu, in his survey of the County of Antrim, observes 
respecting Lough Neagh, that “the grosbeak ( Loxia ), like a 
green linnet, but larger, often resorts to the wooded farms in its 
neighbourhood in winter.” The crossbill, and not the species under 
consideration, is most probably here alluded to. That the latter 
cannot be so, at least correctly, seems to me sufficiently evident 
from the circumstance, that Mr. Templeton knew and corresponded 
with Dubourdieu, and in his catalogue of our native birds, he 
makes no mention whatever of the grosbeak. On the 8th of 
March, 1845, the gamekeeper at Tollymore Park, county of Down, 
sent me a detailed and excellent description of two birds, belonging 
to a species unknown to him, which had been lately shot there. 
They proved to be grosbeaks. He stated that there were one or 
two more still in the park, and that they fed on the stones of the 
laurel trees. At the end of March, 1846, the hawfinch was again 
seen there. 
The Phoenix Park, Dublin, where there are woods of venerable 
hawthorns, has, above all places in Ireland, produced examples 
of this bird. Notes of its occurrence there in the following 
years are before me : — in 1828-29, when the first of the season 
was obtained on the 6th of November, and about a dozen more 
at various dates through the winter;! in 1830 (?), numbers 
were killed and supplied to a bird-preserver in the metropolis at 
the rate of a shilling each; in 1831, the Eev. T. Knox records 
three individuals from this locality ; J in 1832-33 several were 
* Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. v. p. 582. t Dr. J. D. Marshall. 
% Ibid. p. 734. 
