THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Se V3 
former years, as I usually come to this place annually about 
this time. The birds most common along the coast at present 
are the stone-chatters, whinchats, buntings, linnets, some few 
wheatears, titlarks, etc. 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, sow-thistles, are its favorite 
dish. Ina neighboring 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 ! 
Letrer VIII. 
SELBORNE, Dec. 20th, 1770. 
The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows. 
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 due 
proportion of each sex, it should seem very improbable that any 
one district should produce.such numbers of these little birds; 
and much more when only one-half of the species appears; 
therefore we may conclude that the /ringille calebes, for some 
good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in which 
the sexes part. 
