PREFACE. Xlll 



that towered above the shrubs, and thence poured forth their 

 evening jubilee. 



To name all the birds that cultivation, the erection of houses,* 

 the plantation of trees and shrubs together with the attraction of 

 a garden, brought to the place, would be tedious. It will therefore 

 only be further observed, that the beautiful goldfinch, so long as 

 a neighbouring hill-side was covered with thistles and other plants 

 on the seeds of which it fed, visited the standard cherry-trees to 

 nidify ; and the spotted flycatcher, which particularly delights in 

 pleasure-grounds and gardens, annually spent the summer there. 

 Of the six species of British Merulida, the resident missel and 

 song thrushes, and the blackbird, inhabited the place ; the fieldfare 

 and redwing, winter visitants, were to be seen in their season ; 

 and the ring-ouzel, annually during summer, frequented an ad- 

 jacent rocky glen. Curlews on their way from the sea to the 

 mountain-moor, occasionally alighted in the pasture-fields. The 

 entire number of species seen at this place (seventy-five English 

 acres in extent) was seventy ; forty -one or forty- two of which bred 

 there. A few others, — the kestrel, ring-ouzel, sand-martin, and 

 quail, — built in the immediate neighbourhood. 



Nearly seventy species have been noticed in Kensington Gardens, 

 London.f White remarks that " Selborne parish alone has exhi- 

 bited at times [120 species] more than half the birds that are 

 ever seen in all Sweden. The parish comprises an extent of 

 thirty miles in circumference ; and where else within the same 



* Including houses in the category may seem inadvertent. But the house-martin 

 annually built about the windows or under the roof of the dwelling-house ; as the 

 sparrow did in the spouts ; the swallow against the rafters of sheds, and the swift in 

 apertures at the eaves : — the thrush, redbreast, and wren also, occasionally nidified in 

 the outbouses. 



f Yarrell. 



