Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/140

118 near their spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganeæ, etc.



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings; and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Redbreasts and wrens in the winter haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the Lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.