NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



53 



animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated animals 

 are supoosed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food. 



THE BULLFINCH (Pyrrhula rubicilla). 



I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint 

 (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, 

 and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some 

 exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it 

 was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum 

 is remarkably warm and pungent. 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The 

 blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that 

 fierce weather in January. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a 

 little bird that raised my curiosity : it was of that yellow-green 

 colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft- 

 billed. It was no parus ; and was too long and too big for the 

 golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. 

 It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing 

 one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desul- 

 tory that I missed my aim. 



