OF SELBORNE 111 



member to have made the same remark in former years, as I 

 usually come to this place annually about this time. The birds 

 most common along the coast at present are the stone-chatters, 

 whinchats, buntings, linnets, some few wheat-ears, titlarks, &c. 

 Swallows and house-martins abound yet, induced to prolong 

 their stay by this soft, still, dry season. 



A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little 

 walled court belonging to the house where I now am visiting, 

 retires under ground about the middle of November, and comes 

 forth again about the middle of April. 1 When it first appears 

 in the spring it discovers very little inclination towards food ; 

 but in the height of summer grows voracious : and then as the 

 summer declines it's appetite declines ; so that for the last six 

 weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as let- 

 tuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are it's favourite dish. In a neigh- 

 bouring village one was kept till by tradition it was supposed to 

 be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in such 

 a poor reptile ! 



LETTER VIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Dec. 20, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE birds that I took for aberdavines 2 were reed-sparrows (passeres 

 torquati). 



There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this 



September, leaving only a few stragglers. Even on September 24, at Bexhill, also 

 on the Sussex coast, the writer of this note saw none of these birds, only those 

 species mentioned by White, viz., linnets, pipits, stonechats, wheat-ears, etc. See 

 p. 277 of Summer Studies of Birds and Books. 



By " uncreated wren " White probably means chiffchaff, willow- wren, and their 

 kind.] 



1 [The tortoise is further described in Letters VII. and L. to Harrington, while 

 "More Particulars respecting the Old Family Tortoise " are given at the end of the 

 Antiquities. Bell identified it with Testudo marginata, a. North African species. 

 The shell is preserved in the British Museum, and has been figured in Bennett's 

 edition of White's Selborne (p. 361).] 



2 \Aberdavine or aberdevine is an old name for the siskin (Chrysomitris spinus, 

 L.). The name siskin is probably of German origin. This is a kind of bird of 

 which White could have had no personal knowledge, or he would not have mistaken 

 it for the reed-sparrow (i.e., reed-bunting). There is no resemblance between the 

 two species except the black head and throat in the breeding season.] 



