NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 45 



in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a 

 barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws 

 were milk-white.* 



A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down 

 above my house this winter : were not these the Emberiza nivalis, 

 the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool. ? No doubt they were. 



A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage 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 domes- 

 ticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, 

 various, and unusual food. 



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 ARUM. 



root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent.f 



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

 wren, appearing most like the largest willow wren. It hung some- 

 times 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 ccdicnemus, should be 

 mentioned by the writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all the 



* We possess a large rookery, and although we have never had an entire white or cream- 

 coloured variety, scarcely a year passes without some young being observed with more 

 or less white in the plumage, and in these the bill and feet, as well as the claws, are also 

 white. 



t We have not observed the roots of the arum scratched for as mentioned, but it is not 

 generally a very common plant in Scotland. The circumstance mentioned above is wortli 

 attending to, and observers who may read this edition should now notice and corroborate, 

 if they can, White's remarks. 



