Coues’s History of the Evening Grosbeak . 73 
regarded. On the other hand, we have witnesses to their occur- 
rence and probable residence on the table-lands of Mexico, not far 
from the capital city of that country, where Sumichrast observed 
them in the pine woods of Monte Celto, in May, 1857. Mr. Hen- 
shaw considers the species to be “ doubtless a rare resident ” in 
Arizona, in which Territory he secured a specimen in September, 
near Camp Apache. As I have intimated, our rather meagre rec- 
ords do not furnish the data for the full solution of the question ; 
and they are in some respects so conflicting apparently, as well as 
fragmentary, that we feel our doubts rather increased than removed 
when we compare them. It would appear in present light, however, 
that the bird is scarcely, a true migrant, but rather a wanderer 
according to exigencies of food supply, to some extent resembling 
the Bohemian Waxwing, the Pine Grosbeak, Red-poll Linnet, Cross- 
* bill, and species of Plectrophanes. Its general habits, and some 
traits of its character, especially its sociability, familiarity with 
man, and ways of feeding, are those of Crossbills, Red-polls, and cer- 
tain other northerly Fringillidoe , rather than of such species as the 
Rose-breasted, Black-headed, Cardinal, and Blue Grosbeaks, with 
which it seems to be nevertheless related in some technical 
characters. 
The erratic movements just intimated to be probably chargeable 
to this singular bird bring it at times to localities remote from its 
usual centres of abundance. I shall conclude with consideration of 
this point, in sketching the geographical distribution of the species. 
Our early accounts, as I have presented them, indicated a range 
along the northern border of the United States from Michigan west- 
ward to the ocean, and Richardson ascribed to the bird a northward 
extension to latitude 56° N. But since those days it has been 
traced much farther south and east. Being a bird of woodland, it 
will not be found on the great plains ; but, aside from any matters 
of local distribution resulting from surface-conditions of the country, 
this Grosbeak may be said to inhabit the United States from the 
outliers of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. It is thus essen- 
tially a Western species; but in the region of the Great Lakes, and 
for some little distance thence southerly, it stretches far to the 
eastward, not in solitary and fortuitous instances, but regularly, or 
at any rate frequently. Its normal range cannot well be short of 
Canada, in different localities in which Dominion specimens have 
not seldom been secured. Thus Mr. Mcllwraith states, in the paper 
