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 eggs, 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, ‘ 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. Flavirostris ; but the descriptions of Retz, 
Gmelin, and Latham, apj)ly 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. 
