NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 183 
period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, 
as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and under hedges. 
The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, 
driving such birds as approach its nest with great fury to a dis- 
tance. The Welch call it “ pen y llwyn,” the head or master of the 
coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the 
garden where he haunts ; and is, for the time, a good guard to the 
new-sown legumens. In general, he is very successful in the 
defence of his family ; but once I observed in my garden, that 
several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a missel- 
thrush: the dams defended their mansion with great vigour, and 
tought resolutely fro ards et focis ; but numbers at last prevailed, 
they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive. 
In the season of nidification the wildest birds are comparatively 
tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are 
continually frequented; and the missel-thrush, though most shy 
and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my garden close to a 
walk where people are passing all day long. 
Wall-fruit abounds with me this year; but my grapes, that used 
to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond all prece- 
dent : and this is not the worst of the story ; for the same ungenial 
weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured the more neces- 
sary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted our wheat. 
The crop of hops promises to be very large. 
Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half dis- 
qualify me for a naturalist ; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose 
all the pleasing notices and little intimations arising from rural 
sounds ; and May is to meas silent and mute with respect to the 
notes of birds, &c., as August. My eyesight is, thank God, quick 
and good ; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at times, 
disabled : 
** And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.” 
