38 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



great plenty of them." This well accounts for the vast quanti- 

 ties that are caught about that time 

 on the south downs near Lewes, where 

 they are esteemed a delicacy. There 

 have been shepherds, I have been 

 credibly informed, that have made 

 many pounds in a season by catching 

 them in traps. And though such 

 multitudes are taken, I never saw (and 

 I am well acquainted with those parts) above two or three at a 

 time : for they are never gregarious. They may perhaps migrate 

 in general ; and, for that purpose, draw towards the coast 

 of Sussex in autumn: but that they do not all withdraw 

 I am sure ; because I see a few stragglers in many counties, 

 at all times of the year, especially about warrens and stone 

 quarries.* 



I have no acquaintance, at present, among the gentlemen of 

 the navy : but have written to a friend, who was a sea-chaplain 

 in the late war, desiring him to look into his minutes, with re- 

 spect to birds that settled on their rigging during their voyage 

 up or down the channel. What Hasselquist says on that subject 

 is remarkable : there were little short-winged birds frequently 

 coming on board his ship all the way from our channel quite up 

 to the Levant, especially before squally weather.f 



What you suggest, with regard to Spain, is highly probable. 



* By far the great majority of fallow-chats or " wheatears" (saxicola cenanthe), migrate. Mr. 

 White is perfectly correct in saying that they never flock, though this has been by some disputed ; 

 many may often b* seen in autumn collected about one spot, but they never fly together. Ea. 



t In the seasons of migration, nothing is more common, in the Channel and German Ocean, 

 han for our various short-winged birds of passage to settle on the rigging of vessels, a fact 

 which no doubt must influence in some slight degree their distribution, species being thus occa- 

 sionally brought to our shores which otherwise would not have landed here, and others, perhap* 

 being carried away far to sea. I once knew as many as sixteen different kinds (in all about a 

 hundred and fifty individuals) to alight on a single trading smack, during its voyage to Aberdeen 

 and back to London, in the month of September. There were nine or ten of the tiny golden- 

 crowned kinglets (regulus auricapillus') , the smallest of British birds, which appeared to hate 

 arrived from the north-east, having probably winged their way from Norway. These were greatly 

 exhausted, and suffered themselves to be taken without difficulty. An astonishingly extensive 

 migration of the same diminutive bird is related by Mr. Selby. See his " British Ornithology," in 

 loco- For its size even, this species is comparatively feeble upon the wing, and can only migrate 

 when borne along by a favourable gale of wind. The thousands which that gentleman observed to 

 arrive on the Northumbrian coast, he states to have been " after a very severe gale, with thick 

 fog, from the north-east (but veering towards its conclusion to the east and south of east) ;" and 

 he adds that " many of them were so fatigued by the length of their flight, or perhaps by the 

 unfavourable shift of wind, as to be unable to rise again from the ground, and great numbers were 

 in consequence caught or destroyed. This flight," he continues, " must have been immense in 

 quantity, as its extent was traced through the whole length of the coasts of Northumberland and 

 Durham." En 



