NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 131 



produce such numbers of these little birds; and much 

 more when only one-half of the species appears ; therefore 

 we may conclude that the Fringillce ccelebes t 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 bird should be inter- 

 rupted in winter ; since in many animals, and particularly 

 in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at the 

 season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of 

 the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see Fauna 

 Suecica, p. 58, and Sy sterna Natures, 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, and that 

 is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one 

 circumstance when you advance that, "when they have 

 thus feasted, they again separate into small parties of five 

 or six, and get the best fare they can within a certain 

 district, having no inducement to go in quest of fresh- 

 turned earth." Now if you mean that the business of con- 

 gregating is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat 

 sowing to the season of barley and oats, it is not the case 

 with us ; for larks and chaffinches, and particularly linnets, 

 flock and congregate as much in the very dead of winter 

 as when the husbandman is busy with his ploughs and 

 harrows. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and 

 fieldfares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, 

 and to retire to some districts more suitable to the purpose 

 of breeding. That the former pair before they retire, and 



