138 
FRINGXLLA LUDOVICIANA. 
S3. FRINGILLA LUDOVICIANA, BONAPARTE. 
FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK, 
BQNARFRTE, PLATE XV. FIG. II. 
Though several figures have been published of the 
very showy male rose-breasted grosbeak, the humble 
plumage of the female and young has never been des- 
cribed. It would, however, have better served the 
purposes of science, if the preference 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 
species, 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 female 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. I 
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 light 
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 
