86 



NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much 

 pains on a part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well 

 examined before. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, which 

 are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose 

 to breed in England ; but that they should not think even the 

 highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a cir- 

 cumstance still more strange and wonderful. The ring-ousel, you 

 find, stays in Scotland the whole year round ; so that we have 



reason to conclude 

 that those migrators 

 that visit us for a 

 short space every 

 autumn do not come 

 from thence. 



And here, I think, 

 will be the proper 

 ^ & vws&r'-' > as place to mention that 



M' KiSKH&Z'li-' ^ ' --^.4^:- . . , , 



those birds were most 

 punctual again in 

 their migration this 

 autumn, appearing, as 

 before, about the 3oth 

 September ; but their 

 flocks were larger 

 than common, and 

 their stay protracted 

 somewhat beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the 

 whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, and then 

 left us, as they*do, in spring, I should not be so much struck with 

 the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the other 

 winter birds of passage ; but when I see them for a fortnight at 

 Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, I 

 am seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these 

 travellers come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our 

 hills merely as an inn or baiting place. 



Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very 



THE BRAMBLING. 



