NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 107 
4 OR ced Did 1 Ds ae) OB 
TO THE SAME, 
IT is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of 
soft-billed birds that continue with us the winter through, subsist 
during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be 
the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the 
robust wryneck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood- 
peckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, 
that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing 
himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds 
crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and 
woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often 
perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know. 
I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which 
winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All 
the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams 
near their spring-heads, where they never freeze ; and, by wading, 
pick out the aurelias of the genus of Plryganee,* &c. 
Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, 
where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings: and in mild 
weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the 
year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking 
a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter’s night. Red-breasts 
and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, 
where they find spiders and flies that have laid themselves up 
during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed 
birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the Lefz- 
doptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their 
trunks ; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is 
found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in 
the ground itself. 
Every species of titmouse winters with us ; they have what I call 
* See Derham’s “* Physico-theology,”’ p. 235, and note, Letter XIII., p. 30 
