At that season (March) the cock birds have an irresistible inclination to do battle; they are ceaselessly challenging each other, and the fowler takes advantage of it to snare them. Now this man said that these chaffinches sold for 6 shillings the dozen, and that when the birds were `on,' as he called it, he could catch five dozen a day. In a walk of four or five miles I passed half-a-dozen such fellows, with cages and stuffed chaffinches. This alone proves that cock chaffinches are very numerous in spring. Where, then, are they in winter, if the flocks of chaffinches at that period consist almost exclusively of female birds? Probably they fly in small bodies of three or four, or singly, and so escape observation. But this division of the sexes presents a curious resemblance to the social customs discovered amongst certain savages. During the winter the birds separate, and the females `pack.' In the spring the males appear, and, after a period of fighting for the mastery, pair, and the nests are built. After the young are reared, song ceases, and the old haunts are deserted. This summer I was much struck with this partial migration, perhaps the more so because observed in a fresh locality. During the spring and summer I daily followed a road for some three miles which I had found to pass through a district much-frequented by birds. The birch coppice so favoured by nightingales was that way; and, by the bye, the wrynecks were almost equally numerous; and the question has occurred to me whether these birds are companions, in a sense, of the nightingale, having noticed them in other places to be much together. All spring and summer the hedges, coppices, brakes, thickets, furze lands, and cornfields abounded with bird life. About the middle of August there was a notable decrease. Early in September the places previously so populous seemed almost deserted; by the middle of the month quite deserted. There were no chaffinches in the elms or in the road, and scarcely a sparrow; not a yellowhammer on the hedge by the cornfield; only a very few greenfinches; not a single bullfinch or goldfinch. Blackbirds, thrushes, and robins alone remained. The way to find what birds are about is to watch one of their favourite drinking and bathing-places; then it is easy to see which are absent. Where had all these birds gone to? In the middle of the fields of stubble there were flocks of sparrows--almost innumerable sparrows--and some finches, but not, apparently, enough to account for all that had left the hedges and trees. That may be explained by their being scattered over so many broad acres--miles of arable land being open to them.