52 EMBERIZID^E. 



beetles in its stomach, but that towards harvest-time it feeds 

 "principally on wheat. In winter, when it resorts to the 

 stacks, though not much in company with other species, it 

 eats almost any small seeds, and is especially, as he was 

 informed, fond of those of sorrel. At the same season also 

 Mr. Knox noticed its partiality for hay-seeds. 



Since Montagu's discovery of this species in the south- 

 west of England, it has been found to breed regularly along 

 the coast of the Channel so far as Rye, but is less numerous 

 and more local towards the east. Inland it is known to 

 breed in the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Buckingham, 

 Berks, Wilts, Gloucester, Warwick, Worcester and Hereford, 

 but in nearly all of them save Surrey and Wiltshire it would 

 seem to be confined to a very few spots, and perhaps even in 

 those not to breed regularly every year. Its peculiarly 

 sporadic distribution in the breeding- season deserves far 

 greater attention than has yet been paid thereto, and at 

 present its preference for certain localities is wholly unac- 

 countable. Even to guess at the cause many more precise 

 observations than have ever been made are required. In 

 some parts of its range it seems only to frequent the southern 

 slopes of the Downs, or the adjoining seaboard, but then 

 again we find it, and not so very unfrequently, a long way 

 from such districts. There appears to be a possibility of its 

 range having extended since the last century, for it can 

 hardly be supposed to have occupied Selborne in Gilbert 

 White's days without coming under his observation ; yet he 

 assuredly never noticed it, though Blyth in 1837 found it 

 plentiful about Alton which is close by, and even heard two 

 examples singing at Selborne itself, where just ten years 

 afterwards Prof. Bell ascertained that it bred. In winter 

 some few stray from their ordinary haunts and have been 

 taken or observed near London and Oxford, in Bedfordshire 

 (Zool. s.s. p. 2562), Norfolk, Northamptonshire (according 

 to Lord Lilford), Shropshire (Zool. p. 9780), Sherwood 

 Forest, near Doncaster (Nat. ii. p. 164) and York (as Mr. 

 Thomas Allis notified to this work), and at least twice in the 

 North Biding near Bedale and Richmond (Zool. p. 3056). 



