OF SELBORNE. 45 



A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite 

 rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before 

 they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, 

 to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have 

 preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds 

 myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to 

 find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milkwhite. 



A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down 

 above my house this winter : were not these the emberiza 

 nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool.t No doubt they 

 were. 



A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which 

 had been caught in the fields after it had come to it's full 

 colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; and, black- 

 ening every succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end 

 of four. It's chief food was hempseed *. Such influence has 

 food on the colour of animals ! The pied and mottled colours 

 of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, 

 various, and unusual food. 



I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint 

 (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of 

 hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, 

 with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, 

 we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The 

 root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent. 



is certainly nothing more than an unusually small female weasel, which 

 is always considerably smaller than the male ; and it would appear 

 that in some localities it is even smaller than ordinary. It cannot 

 be considered a distinct variety, as it does not differ from the normal 

 character in any other respect. Mr. Yarrell suggested, in Mr. Bennett's 

 edition of this work, that these may be the young females of the year, 

 which have not attained their full size j but I have seen them of a very 

 small size when unmistakably adult. I have received it both from Kent 

 and Sussex.!. B.] 



* [A more full account of this will be found in one of Gilbert White's 

 letters to his nephew, Mr. Samuel Barker. It occurred at Faringdon 

 when he was curate of that parish. The effect of a diet of hempseed in 

 blackening the plumage of birds, and in particular the bullfinch, is now 

 well known. T. B.] 



