WAXWING. 525 



writers give the dates of the Waxwing's visitations.* In 

 our own country this superstition does not seem to have 

 obtained, possibly because the bird has never occurred with 

 us in such countless hordes as those which from time to 

 time invade parts of the continent, and its earliest recorded 

 appearance in England is by Lister,! who, in a letter to Ray 

 (Phil. Trans. 1685, No. 175, p. 1161, fig. 9), says that one 

 or two were shot at York in January, 1680 (or, to use the 

 New Style, 1681). His figure, though rude, sufficiently 

 shews the species, to which he gave the English name of 

 " Silk-tail." Johnson, another of Ray's correspondents, 

 writing to him from Briguall, in Yorkshire, in May, 1686, 

 describes two which had been killed in the preceding March, 

 saying, " They came near us in great flocks, like Fieldfares, 

 and fed upon haws as they do." Again, Thoresby, in a 

 letter to Ray dated "Leeds, April 27, 1703," mentions a third 

 visitation : — " I am tempted to think that the German Silk- 

 tail," he says, " is become natural to us, there being no less 

 than three killed nigh this town the last winter." 



To come to later times, White of Selborne mentions a 



* To help those who would try to correlate the inroads of the Waxwing with 

 human affliction, it may be mentioned that Aldrovandus records a vast irruption 

 of these Goths into Italy in the year (1530) the Emperor Charles V. was crowned 

 at Bologna. According to Gesner, there was so great a number of them on the 

 Rhine, between Mainz and Bingen, in 1552, that when flying they cast a shade 

 like that of nightfall. In 1571, says the former authority, they appeared again 

 in Italy about Modena and Placentia, with much foresight avoiding Ferrara, 

 where an earthquake and floods soon after happened, while earlier in the same 

 year they no less astonished the Belgians by an invasion in force. Some old 

 writers suggest that this bird is the marvellous incendiaria (othei-wise in- 

 cineraria) avis oi Pliny (lib. x. cap. 13), venturing even to identify that with 

 the equally strange bird which, according to his information (lib. x. cap. 47), 

 was found in the great Hercynian Forest, and, in the words of Philemon 

 Holland (i. p. 295), had "feathers shining like fire in the night season." There 

 does not really seem to be the slightest connection between these two wonderful 

 birds ; but as Pliny, our only authority, expressly .says he had seen neither, and 

 that no one could tell him what the former was, the matter is hardly worth 

 discussing, the more so since Aldrovandus long ago di.sposed of it. 



+ It is not named in Merrett's ' Pinax,' published in 1667, but a letter to him 

 from Sir T. Browne, in September, 1668, shews that it was well known to that 

 writer, and had therefore doubtless occurred in England before it came under 

 Lister's notice. 



