NA TURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 107 



LETTER XLI. 



TO THE SAME. 



IT is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of 

 soft-billed birds that continue with us the winter through, subsist 

 during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be 

 the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters ; for the 

 robust wryneck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood- 

 peckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, 

 that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing 

 himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds 

 crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and 

 woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often 

 perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know. 



I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which 

 winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All 

 the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams 

 near their spring-heads, where they never freeze ; and, by wading, 

 pick out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganecs* &c. 



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, 

 where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings : and in mild 

 weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the 

 year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking 

 a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Red-breasts 

 and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, 

 where they find spiders and flies that have laid themselves up 

 during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed 

 birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the Lepi- 

 doptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their 

 trunks ; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings ; and is 

 found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in 

 the ground itself. 



Every species of titmouse winters with us ; they have what I call 



* See Derham's " Physico-theology, " p. 233, and note, Letter XIII., p. 39. 



