NATUEAL HISTOEY OE SELBORNE. 
105 
with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one 
circumstance when you advance that, " when 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 
congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat sowing to 
the season of barley 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 harrows. 
Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares leave us 
in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to some districts 
more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the former pair before 
they retire, and that the hens are forward with egg, I myself, when I 
was a sportsman, have often experienced. It cannot indeed be denied 
but that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or young birds, 
discovered in some part or other of this island ; but then they are all 
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 extraordinary, 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. From 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 kind of birds (what few remained of 
them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about till the 
beginning of June. 
The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the birds 
above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists that have 
written professedly the natural history of particular countries. Now 
as to the fieldfare, Linngeus, in his " Fauna Suecica," says of it, that 
maximis in arboribus nidificat ; " and of the redwing he says, in the 
same place, that nidificat in mediis arbusculis, sive sepibus : ova sex 
coeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis." Hence we may be assured that 
fieldfares and redwings breed in Sweden.f Scopoli says, in his " Annus 
* Mr. Barrington wrote a long essay " On the periodical appearing and disap- 
pearing of certain birds at different times of the year. " It is addressed as a letter 
to William Walton, M.D., and is published in his "Miscellanies," p. 174. This 
letter argues against the periodical migration of birds. White's instances are 
frequently quoted, and attempted to be disputed, and the above letter is evidently 
written in reply to many of the arguments which were advanced by Barrington. 
t Mr. Hewitson made an excursion to Norway, for the express purpose of 
procuring the eggs of some of our winter visitants, which were known to breed in 
Northern countries, for his beautiful "British Oology," and thus describes the 
breeding place of the fieldfare. ' ' We were soon delighted by the discovery of 
several of their nests, and were surprised to find them breeding in society. Their 
