food is a great regulator of the actions and proceed- 

 ings 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 circum- 

 stance which 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 congregating 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. 



Surely there can be no 

 doubt but that woodcocks 

 and fieldfares leave us in 

 the spring, in order to 

 cross the seas, and retire 

 to some districts more suit- 

 able to the purpose of breed- ^ ^ ,,^ 



^ ^ A fieldfare. 



ing. That the former pair, 



and that the hens are forward with ^g^ before they 

 retire, I myself, when 1 was a sportsman, have often 

 experienced. It cannot indeed be denied that now 

 and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or even 

 young birds, discovered in some part or other of this 

 13 153 



