82 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, 
which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should 
never choose to breed in England : but that they should not 
think even the highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered 
enough, is a circumstance still more strange and wonderful.* 
The ring-ousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round; 
so that we have reason to conclude that those migrators that 
visit us for a short space every autumn do not come from thence. 
And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that 
those birds were most punctual again in their migration this 
autumn ; appearing, as before, about the 30th of September : but 
their flocks were larger than common, and their stay protracted 
somewhat beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the 
whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, and then 
left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much struck 
with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the other 
winter birds of passage ; but when I see them for a fortnight at 
Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, 
I am seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these 
travellers come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our 
hills merely as an inn or baiting place. 
Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very 
amusing ; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should 
delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean ! Some 
country people in the winter time have every now and then told 
me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs ; 
but, on considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are 
some stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes 
perhaps may rove so far to the southw^ard. 
It pleases me to find that white haresf are so frequent on the 
Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that it is a 
distinct species ; for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that 
every new species is a great acquisition. 
The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so ma- 
* Mr. Bullock found a siagle redwings' nest in Flarris, one of the Hebrides, but the species 
does not usually breed there, nor any where within the British dominions.— Ed. 
t Lepus albus of Mr, Jenyns's Manual {montanus would perhaps be better), the L- variabilis of 
Pallas being now suspected to be a different species. The hare of Ireland will also probably turn 
out to be distinct, the characters of which I here subjoin, from the work just mentioned. " Head 
shorter and more rounded than in the common hare ; ears shorter, not equalling the head in 
length; limbs less lengthened ; fur composed of only one sort of hair, the long dark nairs, ob- 
servable in the English hare, being wanting. From the shortness and inferior quahty oi the hair, 
its fur is useless in trade." — Ed. 
