Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/155

 come to this place annually about this time. The birds most common along the coast at present are the stone-chatters, whin-chats, 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, sow-thistles, are its favourite dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was supposed to be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile!

Letter VIII To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, Dec. 20, 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