OF SELBORNK. 
the first time, he saw one dead in tlie market on the 3rd of 
September. 
When the stone-curlew {pedicnemus) flies, it stretches out its 
legs straight behind, like a heron. 
Selborne, Nov. 26, 1770, 
LETTER XLI. 
TO THE HONOURABLE HAINES BAIUUNGTON. 
The birds that I took for aherdavines were reed-sparrows (Fas- 
seres torquati). 
There are doubtless many home internal migrations within 
this kingdom that want to be better understood : witness those 
A\ast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter 
with hardly any cocks among them.. N"ow, was there a due 
chaffinch's eg(;. 
proportion of each sex, it would 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 : there- 
fore we may conclude that the Fringillce cmlebcs, for some good pur- 
poses, 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 birds should be interrupted in winter; since 
in many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes 
herd separately, except at the season wlien commerce is necessary 
for the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches 
see " Eauna Snecica," p. 85, 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 ; 
