PURPLE FINCH. 
183 
bill, and similarity that prevails between this and the Pine 
Grosbeak, almost induced me to adopt it into that class. But 
respect for other authorities has prevented me from making 
this alteration. 
When these birds are taken in their crimson dress, and 
kept in a cage till they moult their, feathers, they uniformly 
change to their present appearance, and sometimes never 
after receive their red colour. They are also subject, if well 
fed, to become so fat as literally to die of corpulency, of which 
I have seen several instances ; being at these times subject to 
something resembling apoplexy, from which they sometimes 
recover in a few minutes, but oftener expire in the same space 
of time. 
The female is entirely without the red, and differs from the 
present only in having less yellow about her. 
These birds regularly arrive from the north, where they 
breed, in September ; and visit us from the south again early 
in April, feeding on the cherry blossoms as soon as they 
appear. Of the particulars relative to this species, the reader 
is referred to the account in Vol. I. already mentioned. 
The individual figured in the plate measured six inches and 
a quarter in length, and ten inches' in extent ; the bill was 
horn coloured ; upper parts of the plumage, brown olive, 
strongly tinged with yellow, particularly on the rump, where 
it was brownish yellow ; from above the eye, backwards, passed 
a streak of white, and another more irregular one from the 
lower mandible ; feathers of the crown, narrow, rather long, 
and generally erected, but not so as to form a crest ; nostrils, 
and base of the bill, covered with reflected brownish hairs ; 
eye, dark hazel ; wings and tail, dark blackish brown, edged 
with olive ; first and second row of coverts, tipt with pale 
yellow ; chin, white ; breast, pale cream, marked with pointed 
spots of deep olive brown ; belly and vent, white ; legs, brown. 
This bird, with several others marked nearly in the same 
manner, was shot 25th April, while engaged in eating the 
buds from the beech tree. 
