FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 
437 
tlie female and young has never been represented. It would, 
however, have better served the purposes of science, if the pre- 
ference had been given to the latter, though less calculated to 
attract the eye, inasmuch as striking colours are far less liable 
to be misunderstood or confounded in the description of spe- 
cies, than dull and blended tints. It will be seen by the 
synonymy, that nominal species have in fact been introduced 
into the systems. But if it be less extraordinary that the fe- 
male and young should have been formed into species, it is 
certainly unaccountable that the male itself should have been 
twice described in the same works, once as a finch, and once 
as a grosbeak. This oversight originated with Pennant, and 
later compilers have faithfully copied it, though so easy to 
rectify. 
The female rose-breasted grosbeak is eight inches long, and 
twelve and a half inches in extent. The bill has not the form 
either of the typical grosbeaks, or of the bullfinches, but is 
intermediate between them, though more compressed than 
either. It is three quarters of an inch long, and much higher 
than broad ; instead of being pure white, as that of the male, 
it is dusky horn colour above, and whitish beneath and on the 
margins ; the irides are hazel brown ; the crown is of a blackish- 
brown, each feather being skirted with lighter olive-brown, and 
faintly spotted with white on the centre ; from the nostrils a 
broad band passes over the eye, margining the crown to the 
neck ; a brown streak passes through the eye, and the inferior 
orbit is white ; more of the brown arises from the angle of the 
mouth, spreading on the auriculars ; on the upper part of the 
neck above, the feathers are whitish, edged with pale flaxen, 
and with a broad, oblong, medial, blackish brown spot at tip ; 
on the remaining part of the neck and interscapulars, this 
blackish spot is wider, so that the feathers are properly of that 
colour, broadly edged with pale flaxen ; the back and rump, 
and the upper tail-coverts, are of a lighter brown, with but a 
few merely indicated and lighter spots; the whole inferior 
surface of the bird is white, but not very pure ; the sides of 
