NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 47 



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. 



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 neighbourhood. 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, green- 

 finches, &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 being much amused with those myriads of the 

 swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what 

 struck me most was, that, from the time they began to con- 

 gregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 

 every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. 1 



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." 



The Wax-wing, which is an inhabitant of the Arctic Regions of both Hemi- 

 spheres, seems, at certain epochs, to undergo an impulse of migration, similar to 

 that of Pallas' Sand-Grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus) and the Nutcracker (Nucifraga 

 brachyrhyncha\ when numbers of individuals migrate westwards and reach the 

 British Islands. Thus, since Gilbert White's day, an invasion of Wax-wings has 

 taken place in 1830-31, 1834-35, 1849-50, 1866-67, 1872-73, and 1892-93. In 

 the winter of 1872-73 I myself saw several specimens which had been captured 

 in the Highgate woods close to London. [R. B. S.] 



1 Professor Bell (1877) records an observation of his father, written "nearly a 

 century ago," of the gatherings of Swallows in the aits off Chelsea ! (vol. i. p. 



37 tt)> 



To this day the reed-beds and osiers of the Thames are the resort of myriads 

 of Swallows and Martins in the autumn, just before the season of migration. The 

 late John Gould was so struck with the phenomenon, that he had a picture of one 



