50 BULLFINCH CHAFFINCHES. 



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. Zool. ? 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. 



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 

 searched it out. The root of the arum is remark- 

 ably warm and pungent. 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet 

 forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are 

 very much thinned down by that fierce weather 

 in January. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my 

 tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity ; 

 it was of that yellow- green colour that belongs to 

 the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. 

 It was no parus, and was too long and too big for 

 the golden- crowned wren, appearing most like 

 the largest willow- wren. It hung sometimes with 

 its back downwards, but never continuing one 

 moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was 

 so desultory that I missed my aim. 



I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius 



