region of the air; and that is the reason I never could procure one. Now, this is exactly the case with the swifts; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would conclude, that these hirundines, and the larger bats, are supported by some sorts of high-flying gnats, scarabs, or phalana, that are of short continuance, and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food.

By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the thirty-first, since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows were observed on to November the third.

LETTER XXIX.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, Jan. 15, 1770. DEAR SIR,-It was no small matter of satisfaction to me to find that you were not displeased with my little methodus, or systematic table of birds. If there was any merit in the sketch, it must be owing to its punctuality. For many months I carried a list in my pocket of the birds that were to be remarked, and as I rode or walked about my business, I noted each day the continuance or omission of each bird's song, so that I am as sure of the certainty of my facts as a man can be of any transaction whatsoever.

I shall now proceed to answer the several queries which you put in your two obliging letters, in the best manner that I am able. Perhaps Eastwick, and its environs, where you heard so very few birds, is not a woodland country, and, therefore, not stocked with such songsters. If you will cast

* Mr. White has the merit of first noticing this species in England: it is the vespertilio noctula of Dr. Fleming, and said by that naturalist to winter in Italy.-W. J.

your eye on my last letter, you will find that many species continued to warble after the beginning of July.

The titlark and yellow-hammer 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 red-breast 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 black-cap, 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 always 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.

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 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.

LETTER XXX.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Feb. 19, 1770.

DEAR SIR,-Your 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 entrust 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 were so, and what reason there was 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 palumbus, (ring-dove,) and of the fringilla, (chaffinch,) 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 that a soft-billed bird

* Providence, or rather the great Creator, who does everything for the best, has so ordained it that the cuckoo only deposits its eggs in those nests in which the young will be fed with the food most congenial with their nature, in fact in those of birds strictly insectivorous. It is a curious fact, and one I believe not hitherto noticed by naturalists, that the cuckoo deposits its egg in the nest of the titlark, robin, wagtail, &c., by means of its foot. If the bird sat on the nest while the egg was laid, the weight of its body would crush the nest, and cause it to be forsaken, and thus one of the ends of Providence would be defeated. I have found the eggs of a cuckoo in the nest of a white-throat, built in so small a hole in a garden wall that it was absolutely impossible for the cuckoo to have got into it.-ED.