OF SELBORNE. 323 



Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornitho- 

 logy, I have always supposed that that sudden reverse 

 of affection, that strange avnoTopyjj which immediately 

 succeeds in the feathered kind to the most passionate 

 fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds 

 over the face of the earth. Without this provision, one 

 favourite district would be crowded with inhabitants, 

 while others would be destitute and forsaken. But the 

 parent birds seem to maintain a jealous "superiority, 

 and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes : and 

 the rivalry of the males in many kinds prevents their 

 crowding the one on the other. 



Whether the swallows and house martins return in 

 the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for 

 reasons given above : but it is apparent, as I have re- 

 marked before in my Monographies, that the numbers 

 returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers 

 retiring. 



three out of every four birds must perish before the next summer, or the 

 numbers would increase annually. 



I have been even more puzzled to understand the enormous consump- 

 tion of toads, for I scarcely know what will eat them. If a hungry pike 

 seizes one, he disgorges it again in disgust, though he eats a frog greedily. 

 I have observed the flat margin of a small pond very near to me, in York- 

 shire, on the 22d of June, swarming with innumerable millions of young 

 toads, which make a black belt for a yard or two round it, so crowded 

 in some places that a pin could not be pushed in between any of them. 

 After a while, these climb the higher ground and disperse in the woods 

 and fields. On the 10th of July not one remained near the pond ; they 

 were scattered about the upland grounds. But what becomes of them 

 ultimately ? for the longevity of toads is known to be very great: they are 

 liable to few accidents : if a man tread upon an old toad with his whole 

 weight, it is not injured by it; and even when stunned at the first, it soon 

 recovers ; nor can I find how they are consumed. Do the rooks, jays, 

 and magpies eat them? Mr. White says that ducks, buzzards, owls, 

 stone curlews, and snakes, eat toads : but there are no ducks, buzzards, 

 or stone curlews in the quarter where these myriads are produced, and 

 snakes and owls are very rare in the neighbourhood ; yet, through some 

 unascertained channel of consumption, the whole of this enormous 

 increase of toads disappears before the next summer. W. H. 



