28 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



probable one ; since the matter of food is a great regulator 

 of the actions and proceedings of the brute creation ; there 

 is but one that can be set in competition with it, and that 

 is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one 

 circumstance when you advance that "when they have 

 thus feasted, they again separate into small parties of five 

 or six, and get the best fare they can within a certain 

 district, having no inducement to go in quest of fresh- 

 turned 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 spring, 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 woodcock'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 natu- 

 ralist 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 disappear 

 sooner or later according as the warm weather comes on 

 earlier or later. For I well remember, after that dread- 



