5S NATURAL HISTORY 
were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly 
full, how could the dam come at her litter respect- 
ively, so as to administer food to each? Perhaps 
she opens different places for that purpose, adjust- 
ing them again when the business is over; but she 
could not possibly be contained herself in the ball 
with her young, which, moreover, would be daily 
increasing in bulk. ‘This wonderful procreant cra- 
dle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, 
was found in a wheat-field, suspended in the head 
of a thistle. 
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word 
that his servant had shot one last January, in that 
severe weather, which he believed would puzzle 
me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing 
what to expect; but the moment I took it in hand, 
I pronounced it the male garrulus Bohemicus, or 
German silktail, from the five peculiar crimson 
tags or points which it carries at the ends of five 
of the short remiges. {It cannot, I suppose, with 
any propriety be called an English bird, and yet I 
see, by Ray’s Philosophical Letters, that great 
flocks of them, feeding on haws, appeared in this 
kingdom in the winter of 1685. 
The mention of haws puts me in mind that there 
is a total failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to 
the support of many of the winged nation. For 
the same severe weather, late in the spring, which 
cut off all the produce of the more tender and cu- 
rious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy 
and common. 
Some birds, Hedhting with the missel-thrushes 
and feeding on the berries of the yew-tree, which 
answered to the description of the merula torquata, 
