randa, May 20th, 1821, and the specimens so obtained were
described as a new species, under the name of Emberiza
borealis by Zetterstedt (Resa genom Sveriges och Norriges
Lappmarker, 1822, i. p. 107), who was not aware of
Pallas’s prior discovery; hut Prof. Nilsson, who had previously
met with the bird and thought it to he a variety
of E. schoeniclus, a few years later conclusively identified
the two supposed species. Zetterstedt during a second
journey (Resa genom Umea Lappmarker, 1833) believed
he had met with it in various places in Umea and
Lycksele Lappmark, but there is reason to suppose him
mistaken; for, though Schrader states (Journ. fair Orn. 1853,
p. 256) that he found it breeding in Lapland, it never
revealed itself to the keen scrutiny of Wolley, Pastor
Sommerfelt or Herr Nordvi, and it must be regarded as
a mere straggler to that country. Nevertheless a little
further to eastward it would seem to be a regular summer-
visitant, and Dr. Malmgren has kindly informed the Editor
that it breeds every year near Kajana in Finland, in which
country it had before been observed by Johann von Wright
and Arthur von Nordmann. In the neighbourhood of
Archangel also it annually appears and doubtless breeds.
The naturalists to whom we owe nearly all our knowledge of
the ornithology of Northern and Eastern Siberia—Drs. von
Middendorff, von Schrenck and Radde—never found it
breeding in the parts of the country which they explored,
though they corroborated the statement of Pallas by
observing it as a regular bird-of-passage in various localities.
Mr. Swinhoe has met with it in North China; * and it has
long since been recorded as a visitor, at least, in Japan.
As a straggler in autumn or winter it has occurred several
times in Southern Sweden, and occasionally in Germany
from Altenburg to Austria. Mr. Gatke has obtained it at
least four times in Heligoland, and it extends its wanderings
* In one of his numerous and valuable contributions to Chinese ornithology
(Ibis, 1861, p. 255) be stated that this species had occurred to him in Talien
Bay, in June or July, 1860, but herein he was, as he has subsequently informed
the Editor, in error, having mistaken another species for it.
not unfrequently to the South of France and Northern
Italy. Naturalists have long hesitated whether the Mitilene
de Provence, figured in the * Planches Enluminées’ (656,
fig. 2*), was not this species, and to judge from the plate
so it was ; but the belief of De Montbeillard and some others
in its being a native of the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean is assuredly an error. It was said by
Temminck to occur in the Crimea, but this is probably
one of the random assertions to which he was prone, and
the authority on which it was made is not stated.
Of the habits of this bird little has been recorded. They
would seem on the whole not. to differ much from those of
the Reed-Bunting; but Messrs. Alston and Harvie Brown
state that the specimens they procured near Archangel
were found in marshy pine-woods and in openings in the
forest—places which would hardly be frequented by that
species. They add that its call-note resembles that of its
congener; but other observers have likened the sound to
that produced by very different birds—the Redwing and
Redbreast for example. Disregarding, for the reasons before
assigned, the account given by Schrader, nothing seems to
be positively known as to its nidification. An egg professedly
belonging to this bird, in the possession of the
Editor, measures ’84 by *6 in. and is of a pale greenish-
white, patched with dull ash-colour and streaked and spotted
with dark olive—much resembling certain varieties of those
which the Lapland Bunting occasionally lays.
Few of the Buntings bear confinement well, but M.
Barthélemy-Lapommeraye kept an example of this species in
an aviary for two years, and Mr. Keulemans, the draughtsman
to whom the present edition of this work is indebted for the
foregoing figures of this and some of the other species now
for the first time introduced, had an example for more
than eighteen months in a cage. It was a cock-bird, and
was bought by him at Amsterdam in October 1868, but made
its escape in England in April 1870 ; while in the year last
* On this figure is founded the Emberiza lesbia of J. E. Gmelin (fcyst.
Nat. i. p 382).