78 NATURAL HISTORY 



which had been caught in the fields after it was come to 

 its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; 

 and, blackening every succeeding year, it became coal- 

 black at the end of four. Its 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 3 . 



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. 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken 

 us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned 

 down by that fierce weather in January. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall 

 hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity : it was of 

 that yellow-green colour that belongs to the Salicaria 

 kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no Pant* ; 

 and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned 

 wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. Jt 

 hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never 

 continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at 

 it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. 



I wonder that the stone curlew (Charadrius (Edicne- 

 , should be mentioned by the writers as a rare 



3 Mr. White has justly remarked, that food has great influence on the 

 colour of animals. The dark colour in wild birds is a great safeguard 

 to them against their enemies; and this is the reason that, among birds 

 of bright plumage, the young do not assume their gay colours till the 

 second or third year, as the cygnet, the gold and silver pheasants, &c. 

 The remarkable change of plumage among the gull tribe, is a curious and 

 intricate subject. Is the circumstance mentioned by Mr. Pegge true, 

 " that butterflies partake of the colour of the flowers they feed on ?" 

 I think not. See Anonymiana, p 4C9. MITFORD. 



4 [(Edicnemus crcpitans, TEMM.] 



