THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. AN « ( 
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 mi- 
grators 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 September; but 
their flocks were larger than common, and their stay pro- 
tracted 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 
southward. 
It pleases me to find that white hares are so frequent on 
the Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that 
