66 The Natural History 



men seldom allot themselves half the time they should 

 do : but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place 

 to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required 

 dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the works of 

 nature. You must have made, no doubt, many dis- 

 coveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future 

 edition of the British Zoology ; and will have no reason 

 to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a 

 part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well 

 examined before. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me that field- 

 fares, which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, 

 should never choose to breed in England : but that they 

 should not think even the highlands cold and northerly, 

 and sequestered enough, is a circumstance still more 

 strange and wonderful. The ring-ousel, you find, stays 

 in Scotland the whole year round ; so that we have reason 

 to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short 

 space every autumn do not come from thence. 



And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention 

 that those birds were most punctual again in their 

 migration this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 

 30th of September : but their flocks were larger than 

 common, and their stay protracted somewhat beyond the 

 usual time. If they came to spend the whole winter 

 with us, as some of their congeners do, and then left us, 

 as they do, in spring, I should not be so much struck 

 with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of 

 the other winter birds of passage ; but when I see them 

 for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for about a week 

 in the middle of April, I am seized with wonder, and 

 long to be informed whence these travellers come, and 

 whither they go, since they seem to use our hills merely 

 as an inn or baiting place. 



Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, 

 is very amusing ; and strange it is that such a short- 

 winged bird should delight in such perilous voyages over 

 the northern ocean ! Some country people in the winter 

 time have every now and then told me that they have 

 seen two or three white larks on our downs ; but on con- 



