NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE . 113 



LETTER VIII 



SELBORNE, Dec. 2otA, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The birds that I took for aberdavines were 

 reed-sparrows (Passeres torquati). 



There are doubtless many home internal migrations within 

 this kingdom that want to be better understood : witness those 

 vast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the 

 winter with hardly any cocks among them. Now was there 

 a due proportion of each sex, it should seem very improbable 

 that any one district should produce such numbers of these 

 little birds ; and much more when only one-half of the spe- 

 cies appears ; therefore we may conclude that the Fringilfo 

 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 intercourse of sexes in this species of bird 

 should be interrupted in winter ; since in many animals, and 

 particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, ex- 

 cept at the season when commerce is necessary for the con- 

 tinuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see 

 " Fauna Suecica," p. 58, and "Systema Naturae," p. 318. I see 

 every winter vast flights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks. 



Your method of accounting for the periodical motions 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 quite acquiesce with you in one circumstance, 

 when 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 induce- 

 ment to go in quest of fresh-turned earth." Now if you 

 mean that the business of congregating 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. 

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