THE GOLD-CHEST. 89 



tackle of the ships which are sailing across the 

 waters, and being taken up in great exhaustion. 

 Mr. Selby saw thousands of kinglets arrive on the 

 sea-shore and sand-banks of Northumberland, after 

 a very severe gale, in October 1822. The poor 

 little birds were so fatigued, either by the length 

 of their voyage, or by an unfavourable turn of the 

 wind, that they were unable to rise from the 

 ground, and large numbers were consequently 

 taken and destroyed. In another case mentioned 

 by the same ornithologist, in January 1823, a few 

 days previous to a long-continued snow-storm 

 in Scotland and the north of England, all the 

 gold-crests, natives as Avell as strangers, liad 

 entirely disappeared from those districts, nor 

 did any return, on the approach of spring, to the 

 haunts which they were wont to enliven by their 

 presence. 



Though this bird is enabled, by means of per- 

 petual exercise, to guard against the extreme cold, 

 and though it finds a way to secrete itself in places 

 where frost cannot reach it, yet it seems likely 

 that many gold-crests perish in our most severe 

 winters, notwithstanding their bustling activity 

 and resources. The Hon. and Eev. W. Herbert 



