OF SELBOBNE. 
157 
birds of passage crowding towards the coast in order for 
their departure : but it was very extraordinary that I never 
saw a redstart^ whitethroat, blackcap_, uncrested wren, fly- 
catcher, &c. And I remember to have made the same re- 
mark in former years, as I usually come to this place annually 
about this time. The birds most common along the coast 
at present are the stonechatters, whinchats, buntings, linnets, 
some few wheatears, titlarks, &c. Swallows and house 
martins abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by this 
soft, still, dry season. 
A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a 
little walled court belonging to the house where I now am 
visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, 
and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it 
first appears in the spring it discovers very little inclination 
towards food ; but in the height of summer grows voracious : 
and then as the summer declines, its appetite declines ; so 
that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. 
Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are 
its favourite dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept 
till by tradition it was supposed to be a hundred years old. 
An instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile ! 
LETTER YIII. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selbokne, Dec. 20, 1770. 
HE birds that I took for Aberdavines were 
reed sparrows {Passeres torquati) . 
There are, doubtless, many home internal 
migrations within this kingdom that want to 
be better understood ; witness those vast 
flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter 
without hardly any cocks among them. Now, was there a 
