ii8 The Natural History 



weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, 

 such as lettuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are its favourite 

 dish. In a neighbouring 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 HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



Selborne, Dec. 20, 1770. 

 Dear Sir, 



The birds that I took for ahcrdavines were reed-sparrows 

 {passe res torqiuiti). 



There are doubtless many home internal migrations 

 within this kingdom that want to be better understood : 

 witness those vast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear 

 with us in the winter without hardly any cocks among 

 them. Now was there a due proportion of each sex, it 

 should seem very improbable that any one district should 

 produce such numbers of these little birds ; and much 

 more when only one half of the species appears : there- 

 fore we may conclude that the fringillce aelebes^ for some 

 good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in 

 which the sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful 

 that the intercourse of sexes in this species of birds 

 should be interrupted in winter ; since in many animals, 

 and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd sepa- 

 rately, except at the season when commerce is necessary 

 for the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the 

 chaffinches see Fauna Suecica, p. 85, and Sy sterna NatiircB, 

 p. 318. I see every winter vast flights of hen chaffinches, 

 but none of cocks. 



Your method of accounting for the periodical motions 

 of the British singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very 

 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, 



