BIRDS. 341 



quest, I conclude, of ants, which are their food. While 

 they hold their bills in the grass, they draw out their prey 

 with their tongues, which are so long as to be coiled round 

 their heads. 



HAWFINCH OR GROSBEAK. 



MR. B. shot a cock grosbeak, which he had observed to 

 haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to 

 accuse this bird of making sad havoc among the buds of the 

 cherries, gooseberries, and wall-fruit of all the neighbouring 

 orchards. Upon opening its crop or craw, no buds were 

 to be seen, but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. 

 Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where 

 plum trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat 

 hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty: these 

 were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call 

 this bird Coccotkraustes, i.e. berry-breaker, because with its 

 large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone 

 fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort 

 are rarely seen in England, and only in winter. 1 



OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND 

 YERMES. 



INSECTS IN GENERAL. 



HE day and night insects occupy the annuals 

 alternately : the Papilios, Muscce, and Apes 

 are succeeded at the close of the day by 

 Fhakcnce, earwigs, woodlice, &c. In the 

 dusk of the evening, when beetles begin to 



buz, partridges begin to call ; these two circumstances are 



exactly coincident. 



1 I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the 

 hardest winters, at which season of the year I have had in my possession 

 two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in different years. 

 MARK WICK. 



Of late years this species has become much commoner in England, 



