I saw the birds myself nailed against the
end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet,
and claws were milk-white.
A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above
my house this winter: were not these the emberiza nivalis, the
snow-flake of the Brat. Zool.? No doubt they were.
A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been
caught in the fields after it had come to its full colours. In about a
year it began to look dingy; and, blackening every succeeding year,
it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hemp-
seed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals! The pied
and mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be
owing to high, various, and unusual food.
I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum)
was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten
in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness,
myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the
thrush kind that searched it out.
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