A few years ago I saw a cock BULLFINCH in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it

was come to its full colours. 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 colour of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food.*

I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing with some exact. ness myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum is remarkably warm and pun. gent.

Our flocks of hen chaffinches have not yet for

* Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour; for, though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the latter.

saken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in Jan

uary.

In the middle of February I discovered in my tall hedges a little bird that raised my curiosity; it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no parus, 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 downward, 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, charadrius œdicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird; it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, "circa aquas versantes;" for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheepwalks, far removed from water; what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs.*

On the 27th of February, 1788, stone curlews were heard to pipe; and on March the 1st, after it was dark, some were passing over the village, as might be perceived by their quick, short note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of watchword, that they may not stray and lose their companions.

Thus we see that, retire whithersoever they may in the winter, they return again early in the spring, and are, as it now appears, the first summer birds that come back. Perhaps the mildness of the season may have quickened the emigration of the curlews this year.

They spend the day in high, elevated fields and steepwalks,

I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnæus, perhaps, would call the species mus minimus.

LETTER XVI.

Selborne, April 18, 1768. DEAR SIR, THE history of the stone curlew, charadrius ædicnemus, is as follows: It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field, so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our gray spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round, of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Edicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.

but seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, perhaps for water, which their upland haunts do not afford them.WHITE, Observations on Birds.

through the bottom of the thorns, yet it would not come into fair sight; but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping, and shivering with its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct.-See RAY's Philos. Letters, p. 108. The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared; it usually builds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing; its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willowwrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, cherries, currants, &c., and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.

A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough or some

old pales, calling it a jarbird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta Europea (the nuthatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong or more.

Now is the only time to ascertain the shortwinged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion; there is no distinction of genus or species.

In summer time SNIPES play over the moors,

piping and humming; they always hum as they are descending. Is not their hum ventriloquous, like that of the turkey? Some suspect that it is made by their wings.

This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, with its back downward.