THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE,  ° 31 
over, would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful cradle, 
an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a 
wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle. 
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his 
servant had shot one last January, in that severe weather, 
which he believed would puzzle me. I called to see it this 
summer, not knowing what to expect, but the moment I took 
it in hand, I pronounced it the male German silk-tail, from 
the five peculiar crimson tags or points which it carries at the 
ends of five of the short remiges.'' It cannot, I suppose, with 
any propriety, be called an English bird; and yet I see, by 
Ray’s Philosophical Letters, that great flocks of them, feeding 
on haws, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685. 
The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total 
failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many 
of the winged nation. For the same severe weather, late in 
the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more tender 
and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy and 
common. 
Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding 
on the berries of the yew tree, which answered to the descrip- 
tion of the ring-ousel, were lately seen in this neighborhood. 
I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without 
success.” 
Query: Might not canary birds be naturalized to this 
climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the 
nests of some of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, 
etc.? Before winter perhaps they might be hardened, and able 
to shift for themselves. 
About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at 
Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the 
Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could not 
! Remiges —the large quills of the wings of birds. 
2 See Letters XIII and XX. 
