82 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, 

 which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should 

 never choose to breed in England : but that they should not 

 think even the highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered 

 enough, is a circumstance still more strange and wonderful.* 

 The ring-ousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round ; 

 so that we have reason to conclude that those migrators that 

 visit us for a short space every autumn do not come from thence. 



And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that 

 those birds were most punctual again in their migration this 

 autumn ; appearing, as before, about the 30th of September : but 

 their flocks were larger than common, and their stay protracted 

 somewhat beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the 

 whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, and then 

 left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much struck 

 with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the other 

 winter birds of passage ; but when I see them for a fortnight at 

 Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, 

 I am seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these 

 travellers come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our 

 hills merely as an inn or baiting place. 



Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very 

 amusing ; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should 

 delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean ! Some 

 country people in the winter time have every now and then told 

 me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs ; 

 but, on considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are 

 some stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes 

 perhaps may rove so far to the southward. 



It pleases me to find that white barest are so frequent on the 

 Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that it is a 

 distinct species ; for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that 

 every new species is a great acquisition. 



The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so ma- 



* Mr. Bullock found a single redwings' nest in Harris, one of the Hebrides, hut the species 

 does not usually hreed there, nor any where within the British dominions. ED. 



t Lepus alfow of Mr. Jenyns's Manual (mantanus would perhaps be better), the L. variabilis of 

 Pallas being now suspected to be a different species. The hare of Ireland will also probably turn 

 out to be distinct, the characters of which I here subjoin, from the work just mentioned. " Head 

 shorter and more rounded than in the common hare ; ears shorter, not equalling the head in 

 length; limbs less lengthened ; fur composed of only one sort of hair, the long dark hairs, ob- 

 servable in the English hare, being wanting. From the shortness and inferior quality of the hair, 

 its fur is useless in trade." ED. 



