wish you could discover some good grounds for this suspicion.

I was glad you were pleased with my specimen of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl; you were, I find, acquainted with the bird before.

When we meet I shall be glad to have some conversation with you concerning the proposal you make of my drawing up an account of the animals in this neighbourhood. Your partiality towards my small abilities persuades you, I fear, that I am able to do more than is in my power for it is no small undertaking for a man unsupported and alone to begin a natural history from his own autopsia! Though there is endless room for observation in the field of nature, which is boundless, yet investigation (where a man endeavours to be sure of his facts) can make but slow progress; and all that one could collect in many years would go into a very narrow compass.

Some extracts from your ingenious Investigations of the Difference between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy, etc., have fallen in my way, and gave me great satisfaction: they have removed the objections that always arose in my mind whenever I came to the passages which you quote. Surely the judicious Virgil, when writing a didactic poem for the region of Italy, could never think of describing freezing rivers, unless such severity of weather pretty frequently occurred!

P.S.-Swallows appear amidst snows and frost.

LETTER VI.

SELBORNE, May 21st, 1770.

THE severity and turbulence of last month so interrupted the regular process of summer migration, that some of the birds do but just begin to show themselves, and others are apparently thinner than usual; as the white-throat, the blackcap, the red-start, the fly-catcher. I well remember that after the very severe spring in the year 1739-40, summer birds of passage were very scarce. They come probably hither with a south-east wind, or when it blows between those points; but in that unfavourable year the winds blowed the whole spring and summer through from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these disadvantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared this year as early as the 11th April amidst frost and snow; but they withdrew again for a time.

I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little satisfied with Scopoli's new publication; there is room to expect great things from the hands of that man, who is a good naturalist: and one would think that a history of the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that work, and hope to get it sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches that work in the quicksilver mines of that district.

When you talked of keeping a reed-sparrow, and giving it seeds, I could not help wondering; because the reedsparrow which I mentioned to you (Passer arundinaceus minor Raii) is a soft-billed bird; and most probably migrates hence before winter; whereas the bird you kept (Passer torquatus Raii) abides all the year, and is a thickbilled bird. I question whether the latter be much of a

songster; but in this matter I want to be better informed. The former has a variety of hurrying notes, and sings all night. Some part of the song of the former, I suspect, is attributed to the latter. We have plenty of the soft-billed sort, which Mr. Pennant had entirely left out of his British Zoology, till I reminded him of his omission. See British Zoology last published, p. 16.

I have somewhat to advance on the different manners in which different birds fly and walk; but as this is a subject that I have not enough considered, and is of such a nature as not to be contained in a small space, I shall say nothing further about it at present.

:

No doubt the reason why the sex of birds in their first plumage is so difficult to be distinguished is, as you say, "because they are not to pair and discharge their parental functions till the ensuing spring." As colours seem to be the chief external sexual distinction in many birds, these colours do not take place till sexual attachments begin to obtain. And the case is the same in quadrupeds; among whom, in their younger days, the sexes differ but little but, as they advance to maturity, horns and shaggy manes, beards and brawny necks, etc., etc., strongly discriminate the male from the female. We may instance still farther in our own species, where a beard and stronger features are usually characteristic of the male sex: but this sexual diversity does not take place in earlier life; for a beautiful youth shall be so like a beautiful girl that the difference shall not be discernible:

"Quem si puellarum insereres choro,

Mirè sagaces falleret hospites

Discrimen obscurum, solutis

Crinibus, ambiguoqne vultu."

HOR. ODES. II. od. 5-21, p. 131, orig. edit.

LETTER VII.

RINGMER, near LEWES, Oct. 8th, 1770..

I AM glad to hear that Kuckalm is to furnish you with the birds of Jamaica; a sight of the hirundines of that hot and distant island would be a great entertainment to me.

The Anni of Scopoli are now in my possession; and I have read the Annus Primus with satisfaction; for though some parts of this work are exceptionable, and he may advance some mistaken observations, yet the ornithology of so distant a country as Carniola is very curious. Men that undertake only one district are much more likely to advance natural knowledge than those that grasp at more than they can possibly be acquainted with: every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer.

The reason perhaps why he mentions nothing of Ray's Ornithology may be the extreme poverty and distance of his country, into which the works of our great naturalist may have never yet found their way. You have doubts, I know, whether this Ornithology is genuine, and really the work of Scopoli: as to myself, I think I discover strong tokens of authenticity; the style corresponds with that of his Entomology; and his characters of the ordines and genera are many of them new, expressive, and masterly. He has ventured to alter some of the Linnæan genera with sufficient show of reason.

It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many swifts and no swallows at Staines; because, in my long observation of those birds, I never could discover the least degree of rivalry or hostility between the species.

Ray remarks that birds of the Gallina order, as cocks

and hens, partridges, and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that dust themselves never wash; and I once thought that those birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken, for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers. Does not the skylark

dust?

Query.-Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method of purification from these pulveratrices? because I find from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over with sand or dust.

A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground, and that it was fed by the little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing

and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat.in its mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude.

In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond, and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the libellulo, or dragon-flies, some of which