xiv WHITE'S SELBORNE 



enced in their choice of food by color, red being especially 

 favored by many species, much as bees and numerous insects 

 are partial to flowers of certain hues. 



It would have been interesting could White have watched 

 the mysterious movements of one of our game birds, the 

 woodcock, some of whose habits especially its strange 

 disappearance during the moulting season would have puz- 

 zled him perchance as greatly as the vanishing swallow kind, 

 which he would fain believe hybernated in the Island, instead 

 of migrating to a warmer clime. The drumming of the ruffed 

 grouse, in like manner, which so long baffled the naturalists, 

 would have afforded him an equal opportunity for close 

 investigation. Although he declares there is no bird 

 whose habits he has studied so closely as those of the fern- 

 owl or goat-sucker, a favorite also with Thoreau, the 

 reader will place the swallow tribe on an equal plane. To 

 these he recurs continually, much as does the Walden phi- 

 losopher to his mysterious "night-warbler," and his owl, "the 

 alpha and omega of sound." 



Throughout the pages of the "Natural History of Selborne," 

 the migrants are ever his deepest concern, the subject of 

 migration even yet affording mysteries that have scarcely 

 been penetrated. The olden belief that the swallow kind 

 hybernated under water or in the ground or caves, was 

 shared by him, though sometimes, it would seem, in a waver- 

 ing way, he reverting continually to the subject in numerous 

 letters. Nor could he bring himself to believe that certain 

 other birds of passage which were feeble fliers, and which 

 throughout the summer flitted but from hedge to hedge could 

 be able to traverse the seas in flight to remote continents. 



It was likewise a mystery to him whence the ring-ouzels 

 migrate so mysteriously every September, to make their 

 appearance again, as if on their return, every April; as, in 

 his earlier letters, he was also perplexed that the swift should 

 leave before the middle of August invariably, while the house- 

 martin remained till the middle of October. 



It was his custom to visit the seacoast annually to keep a 

 lookout for departing passeres, although he was never able 

 to discover the summer short-winged birds of passage assem- 



