you heard so very few birds, is not a woodland country, and therefore not stocked with such songsters. If you will cast your eye on my last letter, you will find that many species continued to warble after the beginning of July.

The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late; and therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song: for I lay it down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is any incubation going on there is music. As to the redbreast and wren, it is well known to the most incurious observer that they whistle the year round, hard frost excepted; especially the latter.

It was not in my power to procure you a blackcap, or a less reed-sparrow, or sedge bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would require more nice and curious management in a cage than I should be able to give them : they are both distinguished songsters. The note of the former has such a wild sweetness that it brings to my mind those lines in a song in "As You Like It."

"And tune his merry note

Unto the wild bird's throat."
SHAKSPEARE.

The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song of several other birds; but then it has also a hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage: it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot.

It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night; perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame redbreast in a cage that always sang as long as candles were in the room; but in their wild state no one supposes they sing in the night.

I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there are to be seen much fewer birds in July than in any former month, notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily. Sure I am, that it is far otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer advances: and I saw, at the time mentioned, many hundreds of young wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in the

L

other species, may it not be owing to the dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by the leaves?

Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs of woodcocks and snipes, but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be: all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels.1

LETTER IV.

TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, Feb. 19, 1770.

OUR observation, that "the cuckoo does not deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in its way, but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous, with whom to intrust its young," is perfectly new to me, and struck me so forcibly, that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to consider whether the fact was so, and what reason there was

1 That good observer, Mr. Thompson, in his "Natural History of Ireland" (Birds, vol. ii. p. 239) states that on examination of the stomachs of thirteen woodcocks, killed at different periods and in every kind of weather, from October to March, one was found to contain only small pebbles; ten vegetable matter, chiefly Confervæ (in one instance an aquatic moss), and several of them worms of small or moderate size, insect larvæ and aquatic coleoptera, together with a few pebbles. The vegetable matter, of which there is often a considerable quantity, probably remains intact after the gastric juice has acted on the worms and other animal food, and thus appears disproportionate to the other contents. As to the food of snipe, he says (tom. cit. p. 268), "The contents of the stomach of seven of these birds, which were particularly examined, and all from different localities, were as follows:-Of three shot in the month of January, two contained a few seeds, and the third was half filled with soft vegetable matter; two shot in March exhibited the remains of vegetable food, which resembled Conferva; of two killed

for it. When I came to recollect and inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever been seen in these parts, except in the nest of the wagtail, the hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the whitethroat, and the red breast, all soft-billed insectivorous birds. The excellent Mr. Willughby mentions

the nest of the ring-dove (Palumbus), and of the chaffinch (Fringilla), birds that subsist on acorns and grains, and such hard food; but then he does not mention them as of his own knowledge, but says afterwards that he saw himself a wagtail feeding a cuckoo. It appears hardly possible

in October, one contained a large worm, and two or three seeds of different kinds; the other two, insect larvæ (Ascaris-like in form). Fragments of stone, of which some were the size of small peas, were found in all, the last-noted one being filled with them.

In almost all moist soils, and in cow-dung, peculiar small thin worms of a uniform deep red colour (not at all the same species found in uplands and gardens) occur, and during slight frosts they come up to the surface in thousands. During such weather, both woodcocks and snipe make these their chief food, and are then in first-rate condition.--ED.

1 In "The Ibis" for 1865, p. 178, Mr. Dawson Rowley, on the authority of continental as well as British authors, has published a list

that a soft-billed bird should subsist on the same food with the hard-billed, for the former have thin membranaceous stomachs suited to their soft food; while the latter, the granivorous tribe, have strong muscular gizzards which, like mills, grind, by the help of small gravels and pebbles, what is swallowed. This proceeding of the cuckoo, of dropping its eggs as it were by chance, is such a monstrous outrage on maternal affection, one of the first great dictates of nature, and such a violence on instinct that, had it only been related of a bird in the Brazils or Peru, it would never have merited our belief. But yet, should it farther appear that this simple bird, when divested of that natural σropy that seems to raise the kind in general above themselves, and inspire them with extraordinary degrees of cunning and address, may be still endued with a more enlarged faculty of discerning what species are suitable and congenerous nursing-mothers for its disregarded eggs and young, and may deposit them only under their care, this would be adding wonder to wonder, and instancing in a fresh manner that the methods of Providence are not subjected to any mode or rule, but astonish us in new lights, and in various and changeable appearances.

of thirty-seven European species of birds in whose nests the egg of the cuckoo has been found more or less frequently, and to this list the editor of "The Ibis was able to add fifteen others. On different authority, another list of twenty-two species is given in "The Birds of Middlesex," p. 120.-ED.

1 Since the above remarks were written by Gilbert White, so many extraordinary facts in relation to the habits of the cuckoo have been brought to light, mainly through the researches of modern ornithologists, that it would be impossible within the compass of a foot-note to mention half of them.

Commencing with the observations of Dr. Jenner (Phil. Trans. vol. lxxviii. p. 225), the reader may be referred to what has been published by Col. Montagu (Orn. Dict. Introd.), Mr. Blackwall (Manchester Memoirs, 2nd series), Mr. Durham Weir (Macgillivray's Hist. Brit. Birds, vol. iii. p. 128), Dr. Baldamus (Naumannia, 1853, pp. 307326), a very remarkable paper translated and epitomized by the Rev. A. C. Smith and Mr. George Dawson Rowley respectively in the "Zoologist," 1868, pp. 1145-1166, and "The Ibis," 1865, p. 178; Herr Adolf Müller, in "Der Zoologische Garten," for Oct. 1868;

What was said by a very ancient and sublime writer concerning the defect of natural affection in the ostrich, may be well applied to the bird we are talking of:

"She is hardened against her young ones, as though they

were not her's:

"Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding."

Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a season, or does she drop several in different nests according as opportunity offers ?2

LETTER V.

TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, April 12, 1770.

HEARD many birds of several species sing last year after midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer, no doubt, persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of what I advanced.

If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of the summer migrations, the blackcap will be here in two or three days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one of those songsters; but I am no birdcatcher; and so little

and Professor A. Newton, in "Nature" of Nov. 18, 1869, and his new edition of Yarrell's "History of British Birds." Reference should also be made to Mr. Stevenson's chapter on the cuckoo, in his "Birds of Norfolk," vol. i. p. 303, and, if the reader's patience is not then exhausted, to a couple of articles by the writer of this note, contributed to "Science Gossip" of May 1, 1870, and "The Field" of Nov. 22, 1873.-ED. 2 See p. 151, note 1.-ED

1 Job xxxix. 16, 17.