Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild ducks.

Speaking of the swift (vol. iv. p. 15) that page says "its drink the dew," whereas it should be, "it drinks on the wing," for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers; like Virgil's bees, they drink flying, "flumina summa libant." In this method of drinking, perhaps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of the night. Its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds, as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throw ing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits, you immediately set it a singing, or, in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song.

LETTER XL.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, Sept. 2, 1774.

EFORE your letter arrived, and of my own. accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli. And besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the sexes, nor the individuals of different chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked shape, with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male than in that of the female.

Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise; and also

a snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they walk these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance.

The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of

summer.

Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third. Weasels prey on moles, as appears by their being sometimes caught in mole-traps.

Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old crows' nests, and the kestril in churches and ruins.

There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island. of Ely. The threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their young; the generation of eels is very dark and mysterious.*

Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and seem never to settle on trees.

When redstarts shake their tails they move them horizontally, as dogs do when they fawn; the tail of a wagtail, when in motion, bobs up and down like that of a jaded horse.

Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable flirt with their wings in breeding time; as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very piping plaintive noise.

Many birds which become silent about Midsummer, reassume their notes again in September; as the thrush, blackbird, woodlark, willow wren, &c.; hence August is by much the most mute month, the spring, summer, and autumn through. Are birds induced to sing again because the temperament of autumn resembles that of spring?

Linnæus ranges plants geographically; palms inhabit the tropics, grasses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles; no doubt animals may be classed in the same manner with propriety.

1 Three species of eels are described and figured in Yarrell's "History of British Fishes." But see antea, p. 39, note 2.-ED.

Eels are infested by several kinds of intestinal worms, which are doubtless the thread-like bodies referred to. The observations made by the late Mr. Yarrell on the reproduction of eels leave little doubt that they spawn like other fishes.-ED.

House sparrows build under eaves in the spring; as the weather becomes hotter they get out for coolness, and nest in plum-trees and apple-trees. These birds have been known sometimes to build in rooks' nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs under rooks' nests.

As my neighbour was housing a rick he observed that his 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.

Redbreasts 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 redbreasts of that year; notwithstanding the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer fruits.1

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 on Dartmoor; it was my mistake.

The appearance and flying of the Scarabæus solstitialis,

1 They eat also the berries of the ivy, the honeysuckle, and the Euonymus europaus, or spindle-tree.-G. W.

The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert observed a robin feed its young entirely upon red currants. He thought they did not eat any other fruit, but were troublesome in the hothouse. In one year they devoured every seed of Hamanthus multiflorus and Griffinia hyacinthina just as they were ripening; and it was very difficult to save the berries of any Daphne from them. Mr. Rennie found that a redbreast which he had in a cage greedily devoured the berries of Solanum dulcamara, but would not touch those of privet.-ED.

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 whitethroat, which is continually repeated, 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 Sussex Downs, where there are bushes and covert; but in July an

August they bring their broods into gardens and orchards. and make great havoc among the summer fruits.1

The blackcap 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 birds sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, and expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted.

Blackcaps mostly haunt orchards and gardens: while they warble, their throats are wonderfully distended.

The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that of the whitethroat; 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 may-pole.

The flycatcher 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 sweetbriar, against the wall of a 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.2

1 The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert thought the whole of this passage founded in error, since according to his experience there are no birds less shy and less pugnacious than whitethroats. And the late Mr. Daniel' remarked on this passage that "so far from being wild and shy in the breeding season, the whitethroat frequents at that period the vicinity of London, and forms part even of the Fauna of St. Marylebone, covered as that parish now is with buildings. I have a nest taken by myself from a bramble-bush, by the side of a foot-path, just beyond the houses in the Avenue Road, Regent's Park." The fact is, Gilbert White seems to have mistaken the lesser whitethroat for the common whitethroat. The account which he gives of the habits of his bird will apply to the former, but not so well to the latter species.-Ed.

The spotted flycatcher not unfrequently rears a second brood.-ED.