148 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER VIII. 



SELBORNE, Dec. 2oth, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed- 

 sparrows (Passeres torquati). 



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 Fringilla coelebes, 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 "Fauna Suecica," p. 58, and " Systema Naturae," 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 earth." Now if you mean that the business of congregating 

 is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat sowing to the 

 season of barley and oats, it is not the case with us ; for larks and 

 chaffinches, and particularly linnets, flock and congregate as much 



