LARK FINCH. 
FRINGILLA GRAMMA CAL. 
Plate V. Fig. 3. 
Fringilla grammaca, Say, in Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains , I, p. 139. 
Philadelphia Museum , No. 6288. 
For this very interesting new species, Ornithology is again in¬ 
debted to Long’s expedition, and particularly to Say, who gave it 
the name we have adopted, and informs us, in his notes, that many 
of these birds were shot in the month of June, at Bellefontaine, 
on the Missouri; and others were observed, the following spring, 
at Engineer Cantonment, near Council Bluffs. 
It seems probable that the range of this bird is limited, in a great 
measure, by the Mississippi on the east. Like the Larks, they 
frequent the prairies, and very seldom, if ever, alight on trees; they 
sing sweetly, and often continue their notes while on the wing. 
The Lark Finch is six inches and a half long; its bill, a little 
notched at tip, is of a pale horn colour, with a slight elevation on 
the roof of the upper mandible. The feet are pale flax colour, 
tinged with orange; the irides are dark brown. On the top of the 
head are two dilated lines, blackish on the front, and passing into 
ferruginous on the crown and hind head, separated from each other 
by a whitish-cinereous line; from the eye to the superior mandible 
is a black line, which, as well as the eye, is enclosed by a dilated 
white line, contracted behind the eye; from the angle of the mouth 
proceeds a black line, which is much dilated into a ferruginous 
spot on the auricles; below this is a broad white line, margined 
beneath by a narrow black one, originating at the inferior base of 
