made the same remark in 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, sowthistles, are its favourite dish. In a
neighbouring 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!

LETTER VIII

SELBORNE, _Dec. 20th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows
(_Passeres torquati_).

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 _Fringilloe coelebes_, for
some good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in which the
sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of
sexes in this species of bird should be interrupted in winter; since in
many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd
separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for the
continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see "Fauna
Suecica," p. 58, and "Systema Naturae," p. 318. I see every winter vast
flights of hen-chaffinches, but none of cocks.

Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of the British
singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable one; since the
matter of food is a great regulator of the