FEMALE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 
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 misunder¬ 
stood 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. 
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 lighter 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 neck above, the feathers are whitish 
edged with pale flaxen, and with a broad, oblong, medial, blackish 
brown spot at tip; on the remaining part of the neck and inter¬ 
scapulars this blackish spot is wider, so that the feathers are 
properly of that colour, broadly edged with pale flaxen; the back 
and rump, and the upper tail-coverts are of a lighter brown, with 
but a few merely indicated and lighter spots; the whole inferior 
