NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 137 
Pee baek. Vir 
TO THE’SAME. 
SELBORNE, Dec. 20th, 1770. 
DEAR SiR,—The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed- 
sparrows (Passeres torguatz). 
There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this 
kingdom that want to be better understood: witness those vast 
flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without 
hardly any cocks among them. Now was there a due proportion 
of each sex, it should 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; therefore we 
may conclude that the /ringille celebes, for some good purposes, 
have a peculiar migration of their own in which the sexes part. 
Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of sexes in 
this species of bird should be interrupted in winter; since in many 
animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd 
separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for 
the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches 
see “ FaunaSuecica,” p. 58, 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 
proceedings of the brute creation; there is but one that can be 
set in competition with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite 
acquiesce with you in one circumstance 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 
* The words of Linnzus in ‘‘ Fauna Suecica ”’ (edit, 1746, p. 76), are ‘“‘Femzna migrat 
per hyemes, mas permanet.” In the ‘‘Systema Nature,” Femina sola migrat per 
Belgium in [taliam.’’—See also, note, Letter XIII. to Pennant, p. 39, 
