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TREE SPARROW, 
MOUNTAIN SPARROW. 
Passer montanus , 
Ray. 
Pyrgita montana, 
Fleming. 
Fringilla montana , 
Pennant. MontagUc 
Loxla hambwgia, 
Gmelin. 
Passer — A Sparrow. 
Montana— Appertaining to mountains 
Mons— A mountain. 
This is an interesting bird, of just sufficient rarity to 
make its acquisition generally acceptable; while not so 
uncommon as to fall to the lot of but few to obtain, or to 
run the risk of extermination itself, so far as our country at 
least is concerned. It is also one of peculiarly neat appearance, 
though altogether destitute of any pretensions to outside show 
—‘simplex munditiis’—elegantly neat. There are who might 
borrow a lesson even from the Tree Sparrow, and it is, if 
they would learn it—that they are ‘when unadorned, adorned 
the most.’ 
It is indigenous in most countries of Europe, from the 
Mediterranean, through Spain, Italy, Prance, and Holland, to 
Norway and Sweden, and extends also over a considerable 
portion of Asia, being common, it is said, in Siberia and 
Lapland, as also in Japan and China, and in some of the 
mountainous parts of India. 
In Yorkshire, and no doubt in other northern counties, it 
breeds. It is not unfrequent near York, and also in several 
parts of the West Riding—near Doncaster, Barnsley, Wake¬ 
field, and Leeds. In Worcestershire, I have known this species 
not very unfrequent in the neighbourhood of Bromsgrove; 
one I remember to have been shot near Charford brook, and 
others, ‘si rite recordor,’ were taken on the winter nights in 
