can in this case be no question as to the species. Subsequently,
as he stated in his £ Illustrations of British Birds,’
he twice took undoubted nests of this bird—one on St. Anne’s
Hill near Chertsey in the same county, and the other at no
great distance in a hedge near the Thames. The first of
these again was built in a furze-bush : the second in a whitethorn
about five feet from the ground. Mr. Harting says that
a pair bred near Hampstead in 1858, and that a cock-bird was
taken there August 9th, 1871. The Messrs. Mathews speak
(Zool. p. 2429) of frequent instances of its nidification in
Oxfordshire, but herein there must surely be some error.
Mr. More learned that it had been seen since in Gloucestershire
in May; and Mr. Kerr records (Zool. s.s. 3410) the
appearance of a flock of about twenty, almost all young of
the year, in Denbighshire, August 6th, 1872, suggesting the
possibility of their haying been bred in the vicinity. Neville
Wood mentions a pair which frequented a wood in Derbyshire
in the summer of 1831, and must have been bred
there. Waterton informed Mr. More that the Siskin had
bred at Walton Hall, near Wakefield; and Mr. Howitt of
Lancaster sent the author word that in the summer of 1836
six pairs were seen in that neighbourhood, and later in the
season several of the young. Bolton, in 1794, announced
his being informed that the Siskin bred in juniper-bushes
in Westmoreland, but there seems to be no later observation
of the bird as indigenous to that locality. Mr. Dale records
(Zool. pp. 2188, 2189) his finding a nest with four eggs,
near the top of a tall spruce-tree at Brancepeth in Durham,
May 8th, 1848; and early in the following July, according
to Mr. Hancock, Mr. Robson met with a flock near Swalwell
in the same county; while Mr. Storey says (Zool. s.s. p.
4420) that he obtained a cock-bird in 1874 which had been
taken from a nest in a fir-tree at Tudhoe near Durham the
same year. In Scotland the breeding of the Siskin has been
so often noticed* that any precise naming of the localities
* I t is singular that Macgillivray had but a small acquaintance with this very-
common bird. How that came to pass cannot be explained, but the fact is plain
from his own statements.
wherein it has been observed is unnecessary. Sufficient to
say that it has been recorded as a more or less occasional
incident in Kirkcudbright and in the counties of Dumfries,
Lanark, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Haddington, Linlithgow, Fife,
Forfar, Kincardine and Banff, while it seems to be a regular
occurrence in those of Argyll, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness,
Elgin, Ross and Sutherland—and perhaps all the Highland
shires; but it must not be supposed that the species is in
summer anywhere very numerous in Scotland, except in
certain favourable localities—such as are afforded by the
remnants of the ancient forests, or the planted woods which
of late years have almost restored to the country one of its
original features. It is too quite possible that in districts
like these the Siskin breeds far more commonly than is generally
supposed, for the nest when built in tall trees, as is
usually the case there, is hard to find and harder still to take.
We may perhaps anticipate its discovery in every Scottish
county. In Ireland though Thompson supposed that this
bird might not impossibly breed in the county Wicklow
and certain suitable localities in the north, the fact of its
doing so has only been established since his time. At
Powerscourt in the* county just named, Kinahan saw a
hen-bird July 22nd, 1852; but the nest does not seem to
have been actually found in Ireland till May 1871, when
Mr. R. M. Barrington, who in July 1866 had seen a Siskin
close to his house at Fassaroe in that county, closely
observed (Zool. s.s. p. 3915) a pair which reared their young
in a nest placed near the end of a long larch-bough, some
twenty feet from the ground, at the same place. In the
county Dublin, Mr. Blake-Knox (Zool. s.s. p. 298) saw a
pair late in March 1866, and Mr. A. L. Sinclaire informs
the Editor that specimens were obtained in Donegal in
August 1857; while he learns from Mr. More that on July
3rd, 1871, he saw Siskins flitting among the birch-copses
which border the Upper Lake of Killarney, and others also
near Kenmare—both in Kerry. Mr. Brunton further bears
witness (Zool. s.s. p. 3235) to this species breeding in
Antrim in 1872.
von. II. s