FEMALE WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. 151 
ornithologists of the new school, who appear to consider 
themselves hound to acknowledge every genus proposed, 
from whatever quarter, or however minute and variable 
the characters on which it is based. 
GENUS XVI. — LOXIA. 
37 . LOXIA LEUCOPTERA FEMALE WHITE- WINGED CROSSSILL. 
BONAPARTE, PLATE XV. FIG. III. 
The white-winged crossbill, first made known by 
Latham in his celebrated Synopsis , was subsequently 
introduced on his authority into all the huge compila- 
tions of the last century. Wilson introduced the male, 
and promised the female, together with “ such additional 
facts, relative to its manners, as he might be able to 
ascertain.” It is to fulfil Wilson’s engagement that we 
now endeavour to describe minutely the other sex, in 
all its different states of plumage. This has never 
before been done, though Vieillot, since Wilson’s time, 
has compiled some account of its habits, described the 
female, and recently published a bad enough figure of 
the male in his Galerie des Oiseaux. 
The English name was bestowed by its discoverer, 
the scientific was imposed on by the compiler, Gmelin, 
who, like the daw in the fable, though with much better 
success, appropriated to himself the borrowed plumes 
of others, making Latham’s new species his own, by 
being the first to give them scientific names, which the 
discoverer himself was afterwards obliged to adopt in 
his Index Ornithologicus . In the present instance, 
however, he took the liberty of altering Gmelin’s name, 
most probably with the view of giving one analogous 
to that of Loxia curvirostra , and indicative of the 
remarkable form of the bill. That character having since 
been employed as generic, the propriety of Latham’s 
change has ceased to exist, and in fact the advantage is 
altogether on the side of Gmelin. We have therefore 
respected the right of priority, even in the case of an 
usurper. 
