128 
NATURAL HISTORY 
with tne seeds on the head of a sunflower. The blue, marshj 
and great titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away 
barley and oat straws from the sides of ricks. 
How the wheatear and whinchat support themselves in 
winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend 
their time on wild heaths and warrens ;^ the former espe- 
cially, where there are stone quarries : most probable it is, 
that their maintenance arises from the aurelias of the Ordo 
Lepidoptera, which furnish them with a plentiful table in 
the wilderness. 
LETTER XLII. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, Marcli 9, 1775. 
OME future Faunist, a man of fortune, will, I 
hope, extend his visits to the kingdom of 
Ireland; a new field, and a country little 
known to the naturalist. ITe will not, it is 
to be wished, undertake that tour unaccom- 
panied by a botanist, because the mountains have scarcely 
been sufficiently examined ; and the southerly counties of so 
mild an island may possibly afford some plants little to be 
expected within the British dominions. A person of a 
thinking turn o^" mind will draw many just remarks from 
the modern improvements of that country, both in arts and 
agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were 
heard of with us. The manners of the wild natives, their 
superstitions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will 
^ The stonechat idaj "have been mistaken for the whinchat, since the 
former occasionally sp<^nds the winter here, but the latter never. The 
wheatear, from having been observed in March, may have been supposed 
to have passed the winter with us, but we know of no instance in which 
it has been met with in England between the end of November and 
the beginning of Ma^i'.h. See note 1, p. 118. — Ed. 
