40 NATURAL HISTORY 



that they also thought them all mostly females ; at least fifty 

 to one. This extraordinary occurrence brought to my mind 

 the remark of Linnceus ; that " before winter, all their hen 

 " chaffinches migrate through Holland into Italy" Now I 

 want to know, from some curious person in the north, whether 

 there are any large flocks of these finches with them in the 

 winter, and of which sex they mostly consist ? For, from 

 such intelligence, one might be able to judge whether our 

 female flocks migrate from the other end of the island, or 

 whether they come over to us from the continent. 



We have, in the winter, vast flocks of the common linnets ; 

 more, I think, than can be bred in any one district. These, 

 I observe, when the spring advances, assemble on some tree 

 in the sunshine, and join all in a gentle sort of chirping, as if 

 they were about to break up their winter quarters and betake 

 themselves to their proper summer homes. It is well known, 

 at least, that the swallows and the fieldfares do congregate 

 with a gentle twittering before they make their respective de- 

 parture. 



You may depend on it that the bunting, emberiza miliaria, 

 does not leave this country in the winter. In January 1767 

 I saw several dozen of them, in the midst of a severe frost, 

 among the bushes on the downs near Andover : in our wood- 

 land enclosed district it is a rare bird *. 



* [Our author is certainly right in considering the common Bunting 

 rare in Selborne. I have never seen it there, nor can I hear of its having 

 been observed by others; whereas the yellow bunting (U. citrinella) 

 amuses by its curious song on all sides during the summer, and assembles 

 in flocks of hundreds on the fields and hedges in the winter. There is, 

 however, a very interesting and rare species of the same genus, the Girl 

 Bunting (_Z cirlus), which was wholly unknown to Gilbert White, having 

 been, in fact, first detected in England after his time. Montagu men- 

 tions, in the first edition of his Dictionary, that he discovered it near Kings- 

 bridge in the year 1800; and he subsequently made it partly the subject 

 of a paper which was published in the 'Linnean Transactions,' vol. vii., 

 in which he gives a full account of its localities, habits, &c. I first ob- 

 served it at Selborne in 1848, when a pair of this species built in a large 

 maple in my grounds, and brought up a brood of five young ones. They 

 bred near the same spot in several following years, and were remarkably 

 tame, allowing me to approach within a few yards of them without ex- 



