118 



THE NATURAL HISTORY 



[LETT. 



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 which 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 congre- 

 gating 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 in the very dead of winter as when the 

 husbandman is busy with his ploughs and harrows. 



Surely there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and field- 

 fares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and retire 

 to some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That 

 the former pair, and that the hens are forward with egg before 

 they retire, I myself, when I was a sportsman, have often ex- 

 perienced. It cannot indeed be denied that now and then we 

 hear of a woodcock's nest, or even young birds, discovered in 

 some part or other of this island : but then they are always 

 mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the common course 

 of things ; but as to redwings and fieldfares, no sportsman or 

 naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, pretended to have 

 found the nest or young of those species in any part of these 

 kingdoms. And I the more admire at this instance as extra- 

 ordinary, since, to all appearance, the same food in summer as 

 well as in winter might support them here which maintains 

 their congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, did they choose to 

 stay the summer through. Hence it appears that it is not food 

 alone which determines some species of birds with regard to their 

 stay or departure. Fieldfares and redwings disappear sooner or 

 later, according as the warm weather comes on earlier or later, 

 for I well remember, after that dreadful winter, 1739-40, that 

 cold north-east winds continued to blow on through April and 

 May, and that these kinds of birds (what few remained of 

 them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about 

 till the beginning of June 



