58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding 

 them before they were able to fly, threw them down 

 and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who 

 would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity 

 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. 1 



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. Zoo/. ? 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 domesticated animals are 

 supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual 

 food. 2 



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 



smaller than ordinary." He states that he has received it both from Kent and 

 Sussex, and that "it cannot be considered a distinct variety, as it does not differ 

 from the ordinary character in any other respect." [R. B. S.] 



1 Sir William Jardine observes : "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." 



For some years in succession there was always a nest within a small area 

 of a gigantic lime-avenue at Avington Park, in Hampshire, in which all the 

 young birds had white chins. Some of the specimens are preserved in the 

 British Museum, where there is also a very curious variety of a young Rook, 

 presented by Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier, which has white tips to nearly every 

 feather of the body. [R- B. S.] 



2 This black Bullfinch occurred at Faringdon, while Gilbert White was 

 Curate of that parish, according to Professor Bell (i. p. 45 note). It formed the 

 subject of a letter to his nephew, Samuel Barker. [R. B. S.] 



