NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 101 



resembling the hardy race of woodpeckers) migrates, while 

 the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a 

 bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of 

 houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd 

 in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and 

 woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may 

 often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird 

 we know. 



I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds 

 which winter with us subsist chiefly on insects in their 

 aurelia state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather 

 haunt shallow streams near their spring-heads, where they 

 never freeze ; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the 

 genus of PhryganpfE^ etc. 



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard 

 weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings ; 

 and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring 

 every month in the year, as any one may see that will only 

 be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any 

 mild winter's night. Redbreasts and wrens in the winter 

 haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders 

 and flies that have laid themselves up during the cold season. 

 But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is 

 that infinite profusion of aurelia of the LepidoiHera ordo^ 

 which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks ; to 

 the pales and walls of gardens and buildings ; and is found 

 in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in 

 the ground itself. 



Every species of titmouse winters with us : they have 

 what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the 

 hard and the soft, between the Linnsean genera of 

 Fringilla and Motacilla. One species alone spends its 

 whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating 



