nimself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray's Philosophical Letters, p. 108.

The fly-catcher (stoparola)* has not yet appeared: it usually

breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the pease, cherries, currants, &c.; and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.‡

bramble covert, and is extremely difficult to find. It differs in character from those of the true reedlings, more resembling those of the different fauvets (ficedula), but is of a more compact structure than the latter, and contains a greater portion of material. The eggs, four or five in number, are grayish, with numerous specks of a deeper, sometimes brownish, tint. They vary somewhat in plumage, some being rather more spotted than others, but there is no fixed difference between the sexes. The female is very hard to procure. I have noticed that the tendons of the leg around the tibia are in this species invariably very firm and stiff, and not soft, and flexible, and contractile when cut, as in the reedlings, and indeed as in every other insessoria oird that I have examined. The intent of this I do not exactly comprehend.-ED.

Muscicapa grisola.-ED.

+ The redstart's song considerably resembles that of the migrant furze-chat or "whinenat" of authors (saricola-rubetra migratoria), consisting of short and rather plaintive detached staves, most of which commence with a peculiar drawn-out note resembling "t'yare," those of the other beginning with a kind of "tit-tit," by an attention to which any novice may distinguish them. The redstart usually sings from one of the topmost branches of a tall tree, or perched upon some high pinnacle of a building; occasionally, also, during flight. One of these birds, says Bechstein, which had built its nest uuder my roof, imitated very exactly the notes of a chaffinch I had in a cage in the window, and my neighbour had another in his garden which repeated all the notes of the fauvette.-ED.

Mr. White is altogether wrong in what he here advances. It is quite true that the different species of pettychaps (or "willow-wren," as he terms them) are continually seen about the fruit, and particularly upon raspberry-bushes when the berries are ripe; but, so far from being considered as "horrid pests in a garden," they should be held rather in the light of preservers, their object of attraction not being the fruit, but the flies and other insects that feed upon it; and the same may be said of the gray fly-catcher. I had an opportunity last season of examining a num ber of these birds that had been shot under the needless apprehension that they were eating raspberries, but in no instance could I discover any trace of fruit in their stomachs. The real depredators (after the thrush tribe) are the several species of fauvet, and particularly those delightful songsters the black-caps and garden-fauvets, to which hardly anything in the shape of fruit comes amiss. The robin and the redstart will also pull a few currants, which they swallow whole. I have seen them do so, and have found this food in their stomach, but the quantity they

A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

Linnæi Nomina.

Smallest willow-wren [chiffchaff petty- Motacilla trochilus [sylvia loquax]

Landrail [meadow-crake],

Jynx torquilla [torquilla vulgaris].
Hirundo rustica [hirundo garrula].

Hirundo urbica.

Hirundo riparia.

Cuculus canorus.

Motacilla luscinia [ philomela luscinia].

Motacilla atricapilla [ficedula atricapilla].
Motacilla sylvia [ficedula cinerea].
Motacilla trochilus [sylvia melodia].

Hirundo apus [cypselus murarius].

Charadrius ædicnemus? [œdicnemus Europœus].

Turtur aldrovandi? [columba-turtur Europœa],

Alauda trivialis [salicaria-locustella dumeticola].

Rallus crex [crex pratensis].

Largest willow-wren [sibilous petty chaps], Motacilla trochilus [sylvia sibilans].

Redstart,

Goatsucker, or fern-owl [motheater],

Flycatcher,

Motacilla phoenicurus [erythaca-phœnicura
albifrons].

Caprimulgus Europœus [ phalænivora Eu-
ropœa].
Muscicapa grisloa.

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jarbird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta europæa (the nuthatch).* Mr. Ray says that the less

consume is inconsiderable. The tits also are frugivorous birds, more particularly the blue species; but the muffin (mecistura rosea), or long-tailed tit of most writers, now with propriety removed from the genus parus, is at all seasons exclusively insectivorous. Lastly, the common wren must be included in the list of occasional depredators in the garden, as it occasionally, to a very small extent, robs the currant-bushes, though few would suspect this from the make of its bill. All the pettychaps genus subsist entirely on small insects, in the different stages of their growth, particularly leaf insects, leaf rolling caterpillars, and spiders; and they destroy vast numbers of aphides, often capturing the winged ones flying, in the manner of a flycatcher, a habit which is most observable in the S. sibilans.-ED.

This is a very interesting bird, common throughout the year in all the sylvan districts of Britain, frequenting old trees, where it may be easily recognized by its lively manuers, and its peculiar, often-repeated, monotonous, but cheerful note (resembling the sound twit, or chwite, emitted, at intervals, two or three times continuously, or many times without ceasing, and rather loudly for the size of the utterer). Or it may be known by its creeping about, by successive jerks, along or around their holes and larger branches, often with the back downwards, and occasionally in a descending direction, being the only British bird that is capable of doing this, the woodpecker tribes invariably proceeding upwards, and the tree-creeper being only able to descena E

spotted woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong or more.

Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion: there is no distinction of genus, species,

or sex.*

In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and hum

Nuthatch.

obliquely backwards. Or it may be distinguished by its persevering and loud tapping, as, grasping with its large feet the base of some out-growing bough, and swinging its whole body as upon a pivot, it strikes (in the attitude represented in the annexed wood-cut) with all its weight at a nut or grain of beech-mast, which it had previously firmly fixed in a crevice, and which, perhaps, it had brought from its hoard in the hollow of a tree, returning again and again to the same particular, conveniently-placed chink, to effect the fracture of the envelope. The bill is stout, and rather long, and very slightly recurved, a form peculiarly adapted for this mode of proceeding, and by means of which it is enabled to shell off considerable portions of the loose bark of trees, feeding upon whatever insects there may have been beneath. It is nearly omnivorous, but subsists chiefly on insects and oleaginous seeds. In confinement, according to Bechstein, and, when loose in a room, its manner of breaking the husks of the hempseed and oats, which are given it for food, is curious and remarkable. Taking as many as it can in the beak, and ranging them in order along the cracks of the floor, so disposing them that they may be broken with facility, it then proceeds to dispatch them one after another with the greatest ease and agility. It displays the hoarding instinct when in captivity very remarkably, even more so than the tits; and, reared from the nest, becomes very tame and familiar. Some observed by Sir W. Jardine, "when released from their cage, would run over their owner in all directions, up or down his body or limbs, poking their bills into seams or holes, as if in search of food upon some old and rent tree, and uttering, during the time, a low and plaintive cry. When running up or down," continues Sir William, "they rest upon the back part of the whole tarse, and make great use as a support of what may be called the real heel, and never use the tail." They are rather social than otherwise, at least during the winter, at which time I have known one continue calling for more than an hour to its companion, that had been shot; but in the pairing season they become very pugnacious, and I have then seen them fight desperately upon the wing. When flying they are easily recognisable by the shortness of the tail. The nest is placed in a hole, either in a tree or building, but mostly the former; the entrance of it, if larger than convenient, being reduced in size by a thick plastering of clay. The female sits very close, and will even suffer herself to be taken by the hand, making a hissing noise when disturbed, as is the case with the pari, or tits, to which genus the nuthatches are somewhat allied, and which they further resemble in producing seven or eight white eggs, spotted with rufous brown; the young are very like their parents. It is an extremely bold and active species, in the wild state more fearless than familiar, and even if shot at, and missed, appears in general not in the least disconcerted, or perhaps merely flies chirruping to the next tree, and resumes its occupation as before. It displays the same fearlessness when captured and placed in a cage, losing no time in fruitless and sullen vexation, but-utterly regardless of being looked at-eats voraciously of whatever food is supplied, and then proceeds deliberately to destroy its prison, piercing the wood-work, and effecting its deliverance from a stout cage of the ordinary make in a wonderfully short space of time. One caught in a common brick trap was found to have fairly ground its bill to about two-thirds of the proper length, in its persevering endeavours to escape. It roosts with the head downwards.-ED.

* I rather wonder at this remark from so acute a naturalist as Mr. White; for I am unaware of a single instance, at least among the British species of the tribe here alluded to, wherein there can be the least difficulty in distinguishing one kind from another at any period of their existence. The warbling and chiffchaff pettychaps are the most similar, but even these may at any age be at once told by the colour of the tarse, independently of the differences in their reia

ming: they always hum as they are descending. Is not their hum ventriloquous, like that of the turkey? Some suspect it is made by their wings.*

This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, with its back downwards.

Yours, &c. &c

LETTER XVII. To T. PENNANT, Esq.

DEAR SIR,

Selborne, June 18, 1768.

On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to reptiles and fishes.

The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with so well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of animals, something analagous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants; and the case is the same with regard to some of the fishes; as the eel, &c.t

The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous and yet Ray classes them among his oviparous animals; and is silent with regard to

the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps they may be ἔσω μὲν ὠοτόκοι, ἔξω δε ζωοτόκοι, as is known to be the case with the viper.‡

The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it; for Swammer

Toad.

tive proportions. The females and young of the two European redstarts are extremely alike, but of these one is excessively rare in this country, and was unknown to the author. The black-redstart can only just be considered a British bird.-ED.

There is every reason to think this is the true cause.-ED.

It was reserved for Mr. Yarrell to demonstrate the mode of propagation of the eels (anguilla), and to show, in the most satisfactory manner, that they deposit their spawn like other fishes. For a most interesting and minute detail f his investigations on the subject, see a memoir, by that gentleman, in the form of a letter, published in the second series of Mr. Jesse's "Gleanings in Natural History," where this very long disputed question is at length completely set at rest.-ED.

t of our three species of ophidian reptiles, the common, or ringed snake (nutrix torquatus)

dam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to every body because we see them sticking upon each others backs for a month together in the spring. and yet I never saw, or read, of toads being observed in the same situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not been yet settled.* That they are not noxious to some animals is plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were) when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country people stare; afterwards he drank oil.

I have been formed also, from undoubted authority, that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh-flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the

creature languished for some time and died.

I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, concerning the migration of frogs

is oviparous, depositing its eggs in dung-hills and hot-beds, or in hedge-banks, where the requi sites of heat and a certain degree of moisture are combined. The viper, or adder (vipera vul garis) is ovo-viviparous; and the brittling, "blind-worm," or "slow-worm" (anguis fragilis), is the same, the eggs of both the latter being hatched within the body of the parent. Toads procreate in exactly the same manner as frogs, the fertilization of the ova taking place subsequent to their extrusion from the body, as is the case with fishes. Their spawn is generally deposited in similar situations to that of frogs, but may sometimes be found in puddles left by the rain. The ovales are much smaller, and occur in long necklace-like catenations, those of frogs being in irregular masses. Several of our more eminent naturalists agree in separating from the subclass reptilia, those genera which, like the frogs, toads, and salamanders, propagate by spawn deposited in water, bringing them together as a distinct sub-class, amphibia, and restricting the reptiles to those which are produced from eggs brought to maturity either within the body, or by the heat of the sun, or of fermentation. All the true reptiles commence their existence upon land, even the sea turtles resorting to the shores to breed; while the whole of the amphibia, on the other hand, even those which live most upon land, are bred in the water, and at least for a period of their lives (some always) respire through the medium of gills.-ED.

A slightly acrid secretion is said to exude from the pores of the skin of toads, sufficiently esustic to irritate a wound; but even this I am doubtful of, as the animal is usually very dry. They are not otherwise venomous. It may be here mentioned that a second species, the natterjack toad (bufo calamita), exists in many parts of England, and particularly on the heaths around London. Its general aspect is very like that of the common one, but it may easily be distin guished by having a yellow line along the back; its habits, also, are more active, and it does not eap, its pace being a sort of shuffling run. A third species is suspected to exist in Ireland.-ED.