118 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 
since the matter of food is a great regulator of tlie actions and 
proceedings of the brute creation : there is but one that can be 
set in competition with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite 
acquiesce with }ou in one circumstance which you advance — 
that " w^hen 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 congre- 
gating is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat-sowing 
to the season of barky 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 harroAvs. 
Surely there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and field- 
fares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and retire 
to some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That 
the former pair, and that the hens are forward with egg before 
they retire, I myself, when I was a sportsman, have often ex- 
perienced. It cannot indeed be denied that now and then we 
hear of a woodcock's nest, or even young birds, discovered in 
some part or other of tliis island : but then they are 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 extra- 
ordinary, 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. 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 kinds of birds (what few remained of 
them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about 
till the beginning of June. 
