dogs devoured all the little red mice that they could catch, but rejected the common mice; and that his cats ate the common mice, refusing the red.

Red-breasts sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn seem to be the young cock red-breasts of that year: notwithstanding the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer-fruits.*

The titmouse, which early in February begins to make two quaint notes, like the whetting of a saw, is the marsh titmouse: the great titmouse sings with three cheerful joyous notes, and begins about the same time.

Wrens sing all the winter through, frost excepted.

House-martins came remarkably late this year both in Hampshire and Devonshire: is this circumstance for or against either hiding or migration?

Most birds drink sipping at intervals; but pigeons take a long continued draught, like quadrupeds.†

Notwithstanding what I have said in a former letter, no grey crows were ever known to breed cn Dartmoor; it was my mistake.

The appearance and flying of the scarabæus solstitialis, or fern-chafer, commence with the month of July, and cease about the end of it. These scarabs are the constant food of caprimulgi, or fern-owls, through that period. They abound on the chalky downs and in some sandy districts, but not in the clays.

In the garden of the Black-bear inn in the town of Reading is a stream or canal running under the stables and out into the fields on the other side of the road; in this water are many carps, which lie rolling about in sight, being fed by travellers, who amuse themselves by tossing them bread: but as soon as the weather grows at all severe these fishes are no longer seen, because they retire under the stables, where they remain till the return of spring. Do they lie in a torpid state? if they do not, how are they supported?

The note of the white-throat, which is continually re-,

* They eat also the berries of the ivy, the honeysuckle, and the euonymus europaeus, or spindle-tree.-G. W.

The picture on the previous page was photographed whilst the bird was engaged in drinking as described by our author.--R. K.

peated, and often attended with odd gesticulations on the wing, is harsh and displeasing. These birds seem of a pugnacious disposition; for they sing with an erected crest and attitudes of rivalry and defiance; are shy and wild in breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting lonely lanes and commons; nay even the very tops of the Sussexdowns, where there are bushes and covert; but in July and August they bring their broods into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the summer-fruits.*

The black-cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud,

and wild pipe; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are desultory; but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, and ex

presses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted.

Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they warble their throats are wonderfully distended.

The song of the red-start is superior, though somewhat like that of the white-throat: some birds have a few more notes than others. Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock sings from morning to night: he affects neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houses; with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole.

* To anyone at all acquainted with the habits of the common whitethroat this becomes somewhat puzzling when the statements in regard to its pugnacity and shyness are reached. We feel sure the bird under observation must have been the lesser whitethroat.-R. K.

The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute and the most familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, or a sweet-briar, against the wall of an house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where people are going in and out all day long.* This bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances: it breeds but once, and retires early.

Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden; the former has produced more than one hundred and twenty species, the latter only two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add also that it has shown near half the species that were ever known in Great Britain.†

On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious: but, when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain.

LETTER XLI.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft-billed birds, that continue with us the winter through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wry-neck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood-peckers) migrates, while the feeble. little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our

*We have known this bird line half a cocoanut shell placed in a climbing rose tree by a much-used front door, and breed in it, and even take possession of the old nest of a chaffinch placed in a rose tree by a boy in order to have a joke with his mother.-R. K.

+ Sweden, 221; Great Britain, 252 species.-G. W. [The number of so called British birds is somewhat puzzling to the amateur ornithologist, because of the fact that authorities appear to differ as to the precise qualifications for inclusion. The British Ornithologists' Union now numbers in its list just over 370 residents, visitors, and occasional visitors; Mr. Howard Saunders in his list of 1899, about 419; whilst Mr. Harting in 1875 returned it at 395, and in the 1901 edition of his "Handbook" gives it as 429, made up of 130 residents, 100 migrants, 32 annual visitants, and 167 rare and accidental wanderers.-R. K.]

severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know.

I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganea,* 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 anyone 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 out-houses, 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 aurelic 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.

Every species of titmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard and the soft, between the Linnæan genera of fringilla and mota

* See Derham's Physico-theology, p. 235.-G. W.