104 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



crowding towards the coast in order for their departure : but it was 

 very extraordinary that I never saw a redstart, white throat, black -cap, 

 uncrested wren, fly-catcher, &c. And I remember to have made the 

 same remark in former years, as I usually come to this place annually 

 about this time. The birds most common along the coast, at present, 

 are the stone-chatters, winchats, buntings, linnets, some few wheat-ears, 

 titlarks, &c. Swallows and house-martins abound yet, induced to 

 prolong their stay by this soft, still, dry season. 



A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled 

 court belonging to the house where I now am visiting, retires under 

 ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about 

 the middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it discovers 

 very little inclination towards food; but in the height of summer 

 grows voracious ; and then as the summer declines its appetite declines ; 

 so that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky 

 plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are its favourite dish. 

 In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was supposed 

 to be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in such a 

 poor reptile ! 



LETTEE VIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Dec. 20th, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows 

 (Passeres torquati.) 



There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this 

 kingdom that want to be better understood : witness those vast flocks 

 of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without hardly 

 any cocks among them. Now was there a due proportion of each sex, 

 it should seem very improbable that any one district should 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 

 codebes, 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 interrupted 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 " Systema Naturae," 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 



* The words of Linnaeus in "Fauna Suecica" (edit. 1746, p. 76), are " Femina 

 migrat per hyemes, mas permanet." In the " Systema Naturae," Femina sola migrat 

 per Belgium in Italian." See also, note, Letter XIII. to Pennant, p. 34. 



