NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 31 



tags or points which it carries at the ends of five of the short remiges. 

 It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be called an English bird ; 

 and yet I see, by Kay's " Philoso- 

 phical Letters," that great flocks 

 of them, feeding on haws, appeared 

 in this kingdom in the winter 

 of 1685.* 



The mention of haws puts me 

 in mind that there is a total 

 failure of that wild fruit, so con- 

 ducive to the support of many 

 of the winged nation. For the 

 same severe weather, late in the 

 spring, which cut off all the pro- 

 duce of the more tender and 

 curious trees, destroyed also that 

 of the more hardy and common. BOHEMIAN WAX-WING. 



Some birds, haunting with the 



missel-thrushes, and feeding on the berries of the yew tree, which 

 answered to the description of the merula torquata, or ring-ouzel, were 

 lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure 

 me a specimen, but without success. (See Letter VIII.) 



Query. Might not canary birds be naturalised to this climate, 

 provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of 

 their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches. &c. ? Before winter 

 perhaps they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves. 



About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, 

 which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near 

 Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could not help being much amused 

 with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. 

 But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to 

 congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they roosted every 

 night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting 

 towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some 

 countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring 

 under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, 

 that he talks, in his calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallow's 



* The letter alluded to was from Mr. Johnson to Mr. Ray, in 1686. " On the 

 backside you have the description of a new English bird. They came near us in 

 great flocks like fieldfares, and fed upon haws as they do." And in another letter 

 from Mr. Thoresby to Mr. Ray, 1703, it is said, "I am tempted to think the 

 German silk-tail is become natural to us, there being no less than three killed 

 nigh this town the last winter. " Thus has the wax-wing occurred occasionally 

 in this county, but there is no record of any great numbers appearing together 

 since Ray's time, until in 1849-50, when an unusual number visited us. The 

 direction of the flight was from east to west, and the principal localities where 

 they occurred were the eastern or coast districts of Durham and Yorkshire in 

 the north, and of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent in the south. Their appearance 

 reached over a period from November 1849, to March 1850, January being the 

 principal month of their appearance; no fewer than 429 are recorded to have 

 been killed in that month, and during the whole time they were observed, 586 

 specimens were known to have been obtained a very wanton destruction. 



