48 CANARY BIRDS 



A gentleijian, curious in birds, wrote me word that hia 

 servant Lad 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 loJiemicus, 

 or Grerman silk-tail, 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 Eay'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 w^eather, 

 late in the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more 

 tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more 

 hardy and common. 



Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feed- 

 ing on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the 

 description of the merula torquata, or ring-ousel, were lately 

 seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people to 

 procure me a specimen, but without success. (See Letter viii.) 



Query — ^Might not Canary birds be naturalised to this 

 climate, provided their eggs were put in the spring into the 

 nests of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, &c, ? 

 Before winter, perhaps, they might be hardened, and able to 

 shift for themselves. 



About ten years ago, I used to spend some weeks yearly 

 at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on 

 the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn I could 

 not help being much amused vdth those myriads of the 

 swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what 

 struck me most was, that from the time they began to con- 

 gregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 

 every night in the osier beds of the aits of that river.f 



* The Bohemian Chatterer. In 1810, large flocks of this species were 

 dispersed through various parts of the kingdom ; and from that period, few 

 appear to have visited the island, until February, 1822, when several occurred, 

 and one was killed on the Calton Hill, Edinburgh. They appeared also during 

 the severe storm of 1823, and several were killed in East Lothian last winter, 

 (1828.)— W.J. 



+ Swallows, in countless numbers «till assemble every autumn on thf 



