CEDAR BIRD. 
Ill 
clusters of eggs, and having the waxen appendages in full 
perfection. The young birds do not receive them until the 
second fall, when, in moulting time, they may be seen fully 
formed, as the feather is developed from its sheath. I have 
once or twice found a solitary one on the extremity of one of 
the tail-feathers. The eye is of a dark blood colour ; the legs 
and claws, black ; the inside of the mouth, orange ; gap, wide ; 
and the gullet capable of such 'distension as often to contain 
twelve or fifteen cedar berries, and serving as a kind of craw 
to prepare them for digestion. No wonder, then, that this 
gluttonous bird, with such a mass of food almost continually 
in its throat, should want both the inclination and powers for 
vocal melody, which would seem to belong to those only 
of less gross and voracious habits. The chief difference in the 
plumage of the male and female consists in the dullness of the 
tints of the latter, the inferior appearance of the crest, and the 
narrowness of the yellow bar on the tip of the tail. 
Though I do not flatter myself with being able to remove 
that prejudice from the minds of foreigners, which has made 
them look on this bird, also, as a degenerate and not a distinct 
species from their own ; yet they must allow that the change 
has been very great, very uniform, and universal, all over 
North America, where I have never heard that the European 
species has been found ; or, even if it were, this would only 
shew more clearly the specific difference of the two, by 
proving, that climate or food could never have produced these 
differences in either when both retain them, though confined 
to the same climate. 
But it is not only in the colour of their plumage that these 
two birds differ, but in several important particulars in their 
manners and habits. The breeding place of the European 
species is absolutely unknown ; supposed to be somewhere 
about the Polar Regions ; from whence, in winter, they make 
different and very irregular excursions to various parts of 
Europe ; seldom advancing farther south than the north of 
England, in lat. 54° N. and so irregularly, that many years 
