NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 43 



naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, he w could the 

 dam come at her litter respectively so as to administer a teat to 

 each? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, 

 adjusting them again when the business is over ; but she could 

 not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which 

 moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful pro- 

 creant cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was 

 found in a wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle. 



A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant 

 had 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 bohemicus or German 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 Ray'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 weather, 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 feeding on 

 the berries of the yew tree, which answered to the description of the 

 merula torquata, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neighbour- 

 hood. 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 some 

 of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, etc. ? 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 with those myriads of the swallow kind which 



