1 38 NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 



earth."* Now if you mean that the business of congregating is 

 quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat sowing to the season 

 of barley and oats, it is not the case with us ; for larks and 

 chaffinches, and particularly linnets, flock and congregate as much 

 in the very dead of winter as when the husbandman is busy with 

 his ploughs and harrows. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares 

 leave us in the sprmg, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to 

 some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the 

 former pair before they retire, and that the hens are forward with 

 egg, I myself, when I was a sportsman, have often experienced. It 

 cannot indeed be denied but that now and then we hear of a wood- 

 cock's nest, or young birds, discovered in some part or other of this 

 island ; but then they are all always mentioned as rarities, and 

 somewhat out of the common course of things ; but as to redwings 

 and fieldfares, no sportsman or naturalist has ever yet, that I could 

 hear, pretended to have found the nest or young of those species 

 in any part of these kingdoms. And I the more admire at this 

 instance as extraordinary, since, to all appearance, the same food 

 in summer as well as in winter might support them here which 

 maintains their congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, did they 

 choose to stay the summer through. From hence it appears that 

 it is not food alone which determines some species of birds with 

 regard to their stay or departure. Fieldfares and redwings dis- 

 appear sooner or later according as the warm weather comes on 

 earlier or later. For I well remember, after that dreadful winter 

 1739-40, that cold north-east winds continued to blow on through 

 April and May, and that these kind of birds (what few remained 

 of them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about till 

 the beginning of June. 



The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the 

 birds above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists 

 that have written professedly the natural history of particular 

 countries. Now as to the fieldfare, Linnaeus, in his '* Fauna 

 Suecica," says of it, that " maximis in arboribus nidificat; " and 

 of the redwing he says, in the same place, that " nidificat in uiediis 



* Mr. Barrington wrote a long essay " On the periodical appearing and disappearing of 

 certain birds at different times of the year." It is addressed as a letter to William Walton, 

 M.D., and is published in his "Miscellanies," p. 174. This letter argues against tin- 

 periodical migration of birds, White's instances are frequently quoted, and attempted t.> 

 be disputed, and the above letter is evidently written in reply tu many of the arguments 

 which were advanced by Harrington. 



