THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. | 39 
In about a year it began to look dingy; and, blackening every 
succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its 
chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the 
color of animals!’ ‘The pied and mottled colors of domesti- 
cated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and 
unusual food. ' 
I had remarked for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint 
was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and 
eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some 
exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found 
it was the thrush kind that searched it out. ‘The root of the 
cuckoo-pint is remarkably warm and pungent. 
Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. 
The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by 
that fierce weather in January. 
In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, 
a little bird that raised my curiosity: it was of that yellow- 
green color that belongs to the sa/caréa kind,’ and, I think, 
was soft-billed. It was no titmouse; and was too long and too 
big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the 
largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its back down- 
wards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. 
I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. 
I wonder that the stone-curlew should be mentioned by the 
writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all the champaign parts of 
Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, 
having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already 
they begin clamoring in the evening. They cannot, I think, 
with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, “ Dwell- 
1 White is in error ; food has no influence on color. 
2 Supposed to be the chiff-chaff, of which White subsequently writes: — 
“The smallest uncrested willow-wren, or chiff-chaff, is the next early sum- 
mer bird which we have remarked; it utters two sharp piercing notes, so 
loud in hollow woods as to occasion an echo, and is usually first heard 
about the zoth March,” 
