Several species of the same genus to which the present belongs, all of which present considerable similarity, inhabit northern countries of this continent, and others are found in the same latitudes of the old world. The males of all the species are clothed in plumage of fine crimson, or of purple of various and delicate shades, when they have attained maturity. The females are however of much plainer appearance, and generally present little similarity of color to their more gay consorts. The Purple Finch (_Carpodacus purpureus_) is the best-known American bird of this group. It is common as a winter visitor in the middle and southern States, and at that season its habits are such only as are adapted to a roving life in the woods. It retires in the spring to the northern states, and the mountains of Pennsylvania, and is there regarded with much favor on account of the beauty of its plumage and its agreeable song. A species of the old world (_C. erythrinus_), which is one of several that are natives of northern Russia, of Siberia and Kamtschatka, is very similar in its general appearance to the Purple Finch, and, like it too, it has an extensive range of migration, appearing throughout European and Asiatic Russia, and the northern countries of India. Of the Asiatic species, one is remarkable for having been discovered on Mount Sinai, by an European naturalist, and in reference to that fact, has been named by him the Sinai Finch (_Carpodacus sinaiticus_.) Our present bird appears to be the species alluded to by Dr. Gambel as the crimson-fronted Finch, _Erythrospiza frontalis_ (Say), in the Journal of the Philadelphia Academy, Quarto, I. p. 53, in the following passage: “This handsome songster we first observed in New Mexico, particularly about Sante Fé, where it is an abundant and familiar resident, keeping about the _corrals_ and gardens, and building its nest under the portals and sheds of the houses. In July the young were ready to fly, which must have been a second brood, or else they begin to lay much later than in California. Under a long shed or _portal_, in the Plaza or Square of Sante Fé, they had a great many nests; and the old birds would sometimes fly down about our feet while sitting at the doors, to pick up crumbs, &c. for their young.