BIRDS. 
841 
quest, I conclude, of ants, wliicli are their food. While 
they hold their bills in the grass, they draw out their prey 
with their tongues, which are so long as to be coiled round 
their heads. 
HAWFINCH OR GROSBEAK. 
Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak, which he had observed to 
haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to 
accuse this bird of making sad havoc among the buds of the 
cherries, gooseberries, and wall- fruit of all the neighbouring 
orchards. Upon opening its crop or craw, no buds were 
to be seen, but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. 
Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where 
plum trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat 
hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty: these 
were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call 
this bird Goccothraustes, i.e. berry-breaker, because with its 
large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone 
fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort 
are rarely seen in England, and only in winter,^ 
OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND 
VERMES. 
INSECTS IN GENERAL. 
HE day and night insects occupy the annuals 
alternately : the PapiUos, Muscce, and Apes 
are succeeded at the close of the day by 
PhalcencB, earwigs, woodlice, &c. In the 
dusk of the evening, when beetles begin to 
buz, partridges begin to call ; these two circumstances are 
exactly coincident. 
* I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the 
hardest winters, at which season of the year I have had in my possession 
two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in different years. — 
Markwick. 
Of late years this species has become much commoner in England, 
