138 CHAFFINCHES. 



LETTER XLL 



TO THE HON. DAINES HARRINGTON . 



SELBORNE, Dec. 20, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE birds that I took for aberdavines were reed- 

 sparrows (passer es torquati.) 



There are, doubtless, many home internal migra- 

 tions within this kingdom that want to be better un- 

 derstood ; witness those vast flocks of hen chaffinches 

 that appear with us in the winter without hardly any 

 cocks among them. Now, were there a due propor- 

 tion of each sex, it would 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 fringlll(E ccelebes, for some good purposes, have a 

 peculiar migration of their own, in which the sexes 

 part. Nor should it seem so wonderful that the in- 

 tercourse of sexes in this species of birds should be 

 interrupted in winter ; since, in many animals, and 

 particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd sepa- 

 rately, except at the season when commerce is neces- 

 sary for the continuance of the breed. For this mat- 

 ter of the chaffinches, see Fauna Suecica, p. 85, and 

 Sy sterna Nature? , p. 318. I see every winter vast 

 nights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks. 



Your method of accounting for the periodical mo- 

 tions 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 



