166 NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTER VIII. 
Selborne, Dec. 20, 1770. 
Dear Sir,—TueE birds that I took for aberda- 
vines were reed-sparrows (passeres torquati), 
There are doubtless many home internal migra- 
tions within this kingdom that want to be better 
understood ; witness those vast flocks of hen chaf- 
finches that appear with us in the winter, without 
hardly any cocks among them. Now, was there 
a due proportion of each sort, it would seem very 
improbable that any one district should produce 
such numbers of these little birds, and much more 
when only one half of the species appears ; there- 
fore we may conclude that the fringille celebes, 
for some good purposes, have a peculiar migration 
of their own, in which the sexes part. For this 
matter of the chaffinches, see Fauna Suecica, p. 85, 
and Systema Nature, p. 318. I see every winter 
vast flights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks, 
Your method of accounting for the periodical 
motions of the British singing-birds, or birds of 
flight, is a very probable one, since the matter of 
food is a great regulator of the actions and proceed. 
ings of the brute creation: there is but one that can 
be set in competition with it, and thatis love. But 
I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one circum- 
stance, when you advance that “ When they have 
thus feasted they again separate into small parties 
of five or six, and get the best fare they can within 
a certain district, having no inducement to go in 
quest of fresh-turned earth.” Now if you mean 
that the business of congregating is quite at an end 
