Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/17

 that towered above the shrubs, and thence poured forth their evening jubilee.

To name all the birds that cultivation, the erection of houses, the plantation of trees and shrubs together with the attraction of a garden, brought to the place, would be tedious. It will therefore only be further observed, that the beautiful goldfinch, so long as a neighbouring hill-side was covered with thistles and other plants on the seeds of which it fed, visited the standard cherry-trees to nidify; and the spotted flycatcher, which particularly delights in pleasure-grounds and gardens, annually spent the summer there. Of the six species of British Merulidæ, the resident missel and song thrushes, and the blackbird, inhabited the place; the fieldfare and redwing, winter visitants, were to be seen in their season; and the ring-ouzel, annually during summer, frequented an adjacent rocky glen. Curlews on their way from the sea to the mountain-moor, occasionally alighted in the pasture-fields. The entire number of species seen at this place (seventy-five English acres in extent) was seventy; forty-one or forty-two of which bred there. A few others,-the kestrel, ring-ouzel, sand-martin, and quail,—built in the immediate neighbourhood.

Nearly seventy species have been noticed in Kensington Gardens, London. White remarks that "Selborne parish alone has exhibited at times [120 species] more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden. The parish comprises an extent of thirty miles in circumference; and where else within the same