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SISKIN 
ABERDEVINE 
Cnrduelis spinus, M 4CGILLIVRA1. 
Fringilla spinus, Linnaeus. Latham, 
Carduelis— A bird that feeds on thistles. Carduus — A thistle 
Spinus — .? Spinus — A thorn.? 
Though inferior to the Goldfinch in beauty of plumage, 
the Siskin is its equal in pleasing neatness—the one, as it 
were, embodying the striking beauty of the orange, and the 
other the more chastened and sober hue of the lemon, in the 
general tone of its colour. 
It inhabits Russia, Norway, and Sweden, Austria, France, 
Holland, and Italy, and has been once met with in Corfu; 
it is found also in Asia, in Japan, according to M. Temminck. 
In this country it is but locally distributed, and therefore 
an uncommon bird, though found in tolerable plenty where, 
or rather when, it occurs. In Yorkshire it is tolerably com¬ 
mon in some winters near Sheffield, Halifax, Doncaster, 
Barnsley, Hebden-Bridge, and York, as also in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Bridlington. When at school, at Bromsgrove, 
in Worcestershire, I and my schoolfellows used to shoot several 
of these birds out of pretty considerable flocks, which used 
occasionally to frequent the gardens near the town, and more 
generally the alder trees by the side of Charford brook. I 
just missed seeing them in April this year, 1852, in the 
same neighbourhood, namely, at Stoke Prior, lower down the 
said stream, where my friend the Rev. Harcourt Aldham, 
vicar of that parish, had seen a flock several times just 
before I visited him. They were, as usual, hanging about 
the alder trees which fringe the borders of the brooiv The 
Rev. R. P. Alington has only known one near Swinhope, 
