GREENFINCH (German Granfink) or GREEN LINNET, as it is very often called, a common European bird, the Fringilla chloris of Linnaeus, ranked by many systematists with one section of Hawfinches, Coccothraustes, but apparently more nearly allied to the other section llesperiphona (cf. FINCH, vol. ix. p. 192), and perhaps justifiably deemed the type of a distinct genus, to which the name Chloris or Ligurinus has been applied. The cock, in his plumage of green and gold, is one of the most finely coloured of our common birds, but he is rather heavily built, and his song is hardly commended. The hen is much less brightly tinted. Throughout Britain, as a rule, this species is one of the most plentiful birds, and is found at all seasons of the year. It pervades almost the whole of Europe, and in Asia reaches the river Ob, It visits Palestine, but is unknown in Egypt. It is, however, abundant in Mauritania, whence specimens are so brightly colon-red that they have been deemed to form a distinct species, the Ligurinns aurantiiventris of Dr Cabanis, but that view is now generally abandoned. In the north-east of Asia and its adjacent islands occur two allied species - the Fringilla sinica of Linnaeus, and the F. ham of Temminck.

which grcws to a height of 70 feet, native of Guiana, where, inland, it exists in great abundance. The Indian name of the tree is Sipiri or Bibiru, and from its bark and fruits is obtained the febrifuge principle Bibirine (see BIBIRINE). Greenheart wood is of a dark green colour, sap wood and heart wood being so much alike that they can with difficulty be distinguished from each other. The heart wood is one of the most durable of all timbers, and its value is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is proof against the ravages of many marine borers which rapidly destroy piles and other submarine structures of most other kinds of wood available for such purposes. In the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, there arc two pieces of planking from a wreck submerged during eighteen years on the west coast of Scotland. The one spec imen - greeuheart - is merely slightly pitted on the surface, the body of the wood being perfectly sound and untouched ; while the other - teak - is almost entirely eaten away. Greenheart, tested either by transverse or by tensile strain, is one of the strongest of all woods, and it is also exceedingly dense, its specific gravity being about 1150. It is one of the few woods included in the first class of Lloyd's Register for shipbuilding purposes, and it is extensively used for keelsons, beams, engine-bearers, and planking, &c., as well as in the general engineering arts, but its excessive weight unfits it for many purposes for which its other properties would render it eminently suitable.