140 
FRINGILLA LUDOVICIANA. 
throat : this colour spreads gradually, and the wings and 
tail, and soon after the head, blacken, of course presenting 
as they advance in age a great variety of combinations. 
For the description of the beautiful adult male, we 
shall refer to Wilson, whose description is good, but 
not having stated any particulars about the habits of 
the species, we shall subjoin the little that is known of 
them. Though long since recorded to be an inhabitant 
of Louisiana, whence it was first received in Europe, 
recent observations, and the opinion of Wilson; had 
rendered this doubtful, and it was believed to be 
altogether an arctic bird, averse to the warm climate of 
the Southern States, and hardly ever appearing even 
in the more temperate. Its recent discovery in Mexico 
is, therefore, a very interesting and no less remarkable 
fact, and we may safely conclude that this bird migrates 
extensively according to season, spending the summer 
in the north, or in the mountains, and breeding there, 
and in winter retiring southward, or descending into 
the plains ; being, however, by no means numerous in 
any known district, or at any season, though perhaps 
more frequent on the borders of Lake Ontario. Its 
favourite abode is large forests, where it affects the 
densest and most gloomy retreats. The nest is placed 
among the thick foliage of trees, and is constructed of 
twigs outside, and lined with fine grasses within ; the 
female lays four or five white eggs, spotted with brown. 
This may also be called an “ evening grosbeak,” for it 
also sings during the solemn stillness of night, uttering 
a clear, mellow, and harmonious note. 
We have placed this species in our subgenus 
Coccothraustes . It is probably because he laboured j 
under the mistake that all the grosbeaks removed from 
Loxia had been placed in Pyrrhula by Temminck, that 
Mr Sabine has made it a bullfinch ; and in truth the 
bill very much resembles those of that genus, so that 
the species is intermediate between the two. Mr 
Swainson places it, together with the blue grosbeak, 
Fringilla ( Coccothraustes ) ccerulea , in a new genus 
which he calls Guiraca, but without as yet characterizing 
