48 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down 
above my house this winter: w^ere not these the emheriza 
nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. ZooL ? ISTo doubt they were. 
A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had 
been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colours. 
THE BULLFINCH. 
In about a year it began to look dingy ; and blackening every 
succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its 
chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour 
of animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated 
vast flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying round with much noise 
and clamour, till they are all assembled together, they take up their abode 
for the night. — Markwick. 
