see a large portion of these passengers returning to their worm and insect food in the meadows, attended probably by many that did not take flight with them—though a great number remain in the upland pastures, feeding promiscuously as they can. In my younger days, a keen, unwearied sportsman, it was always observable, that in hard weather these birds increased prodigiously in number in the counties far distant from the meadow lands, though we knew not the reason; and we usually against this time provided tempting bushes of haws, preserved in a barn, to place in frequented hedges, near our secret standings. When the fieldfare first arrives, its flesh is dark, thin, and scurfy; but, having fed a little time in the hedges, its rump and side veins are covered with fat. This is, in part, attributable to suppression of perspiration by the cold, and partly to a nutritive farinaceous food; its flesh at the time becoming bluish and clean. The upland birds are in this state, from perhaps the end of November till the end of January, according as the hedge fruit has held out; and at this period they are comparatively tame: afterward, though the flights may be large, they become wild; and the flesh, assuming its darkness, manifests that their food has not been farinaceous. The distant foreign migrations, which have been stated to take place from the meadows of the Severn, I believe to be only these inland trips; and that the supposed migrators returned to those stations fat and in good condition, owing to their having fed during their absence on the nutricious berry of the white thorn. I have several times seen the fruit on our hedges refused by these birds, and this too in no very temperate season; but in all these cases, the summer had been ungenial—the berries had not ripened well, they were nipped by the frosts of October, and hung on the sprays dark in color, small, and juiceless in substance. The summer of 1825 produced the finest and largest haws I ever remember. They were in general of a bright red hue, and filled with farinaceous pulp; and in consequence, though the season was uncommonly mild and open, long before Christmas, little wandering parties of these birds consumed the whole of them.