NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOBNE. 105 



with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one 

 circumstance when 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. 



Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares leave us 

 in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to some districts 

 more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the former pair before 

 they retire, and that the hens are forward with egg, I myself, when I 

 was a sportsman, have often experienced. It cannot indeed be denied 

 but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or young birds, 

 discovered in some part or other of this island ; but then they are all 

 always mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the common 

 course of things ; but as to redwings and fieldfares, no sportsman or 

 naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, pretended to have found the 

 nest or young of those species in any part of these "kingdoms. And I 

 the more admire at this instance as extraordinary, since, to all 

 appearance, the same food in summer as well as in winter might 

 support them here which maintains their congeners, the blackbirds and 

 thrushes, did they choose to stay the summer through. From hence it 

 appears that it is not food alone which determines some species of birds 

 with regard to their stay or departure. Fieldfares and redwings 

 disappear sooner or later according as the warm weather comes on 

 earlier or later. For I well remember, after that dreadful winter 

 1739 40, that cold north-east winds continued to blow on through 

 April and May, and that these kind of birds (what few remained of 

 them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about till the 

 beginning of June. 



The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the birds 

 above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists that have 

 written professedly the natural history of particular countries. Now 

 as to the fieldfare, Linneeus, in his " Fauna Suecica," says of it, that 

 " maximis in arboribus nidificat ; " and of 'the redwing he says, in the 

 same place, that " nidificat in mediis arbiLSculis, sive sepibus : ova sex 

 cosndeo-viridia maculis nigris variis." Hence we may be assured that 

 fieldfares and redwings breed in Sweden, f Scopoli says, in his " Annus 



* Mr. Harrington wrote a long essay " On the periodical appearing and disap- 

 pearing of certain birds at different times of the year. " It is addressed as a letter 

 to William Walton, M.D., and is published in his "Miscellanies," p. 174. This 

 letter argues against the periodical migration of birds, White's instances are 

 > frequently quoted, and attempted to be disputed, and the above letter is evidently 

 written in reply to many of the arguments which were advanced by Barrington. 



t Mr. Hewitson made an excursion to Norway, for the express purpose of 

 procuring the eggs of some of our winter visitants, which were known to breed in 

 Northern countries, for his beautiful "British Oology," and thus describes the 

 breeding place of the fieldfare. "We were soon delighted by the discovery of 

 several of their nests, and were surprised to find them breeding in society. Their 



