EFFECT OF FOOD ON THE COLOUR OF BIKDS. 37 



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, black- 

 ening 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 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 remarkably 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 down- 

 wards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. 

 I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.f 



with the domestic fowls. It continued at Drumsheugh for some years, 

 and was shot by a gentleman from a back window in Melville Street, 

 who had not heard of it, and supposed it a bird of some very uncommon 

 species. It is now in the museum of Sir Patrick. Another mottled 

 blackbird was some years ago kept in a cage by Mr Veitch, the distin- 

 guished optician, at Inchbonny, near Jedburgh. We have seen white 

 crows very often ; a white robin, with red eyes ; a white sparrow, and 

 a white jack-daw. These accidental varieties, we believe, have existed 

 in almost every species of birds. Sir William Jardine mentions a pair 

 of magpies of a cream colour, which were hatched at a farm-steading in 

 Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. In the Natural History Magazine it is stated, 

 that a greenfinch was shot in the neighbourhood of Ross, Herefordshire, 

 the prevailing colour of which was a rich yellow, mottled with green, 

 yellow, and dirty white. ED. 



* Food, climate, and domestication, have a great influence in changing 

 the colour of animals. Hence the varied plumage of almost all our 

 domestic birds. In a wild state, the dark colour of most birds is a great 

 safeguard to them against their enemies. Naturalists suppose that this 

 is the reason why birds, which have a very varied plumage, seldom 

 assume their gay attire till the second or third year, when they have 

 acquired cunning and strength to avoid their enemies. ED. 



f In all probability the bearded titmouse. ED. 

 E 



