NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 37 



The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total 

 failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of 

 the winged nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, 

 which cut off all the produce of the more tender and curious trees, 

 destroyed also that of the more hardy and common. 



BOHEMIAN WAX-WING. 



Some birds, haunting with the missel- thrushes, and feeding on 

 the berries of the yew tree, which answered to the description of 

 the merula torquata, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neigh- 

 bourhood. I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but 

 without success. (See Letter VIII.) 



Query. Might not canary birds be naturalised to this climate, 

 provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some 

 of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, &c. ? Before 

 winter perhaps they might be hardened, and able to shift for 

 themselves. 



About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at 

 Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the 

 Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could not help 



you have the description of a new English bird. They came near us in great flocks like 

 fieldfares, and fed upon haws as they do." And in another letter from Mr. Thoresby to 

 Mr. Ray, 1703, it is said, " I am tempted to think the German silk-tail is become natural 

 to us, there being no less than three killed nigh this town the last winter." Thus has the 

 wax-wing occurred occasionally in this county, but there is no record of any great 

 numbers appearing together since Ray's time, until in 1849-50, when an unusual number 

 visited us. The direction of the flight was from east to west, and the principal localities 

 where they occurred were the eastern or coast districts of Durham and Yorkshire in the 

 north, and of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent in the south. Their appearance reached 

 over a period from November 1849, to March 1850, January being the principal month 

 of their appearance ; no fewer than 429 are recorded to have been killed in that month, 

 and during the whole time they were observed, 586 specimens were known to have been 

 obtained a very wanton destruction. 



