HE birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows (passeres torquati).

There are doubtless many home in

ternal migrations within this kingdom

that want to be better understood: witness those vast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without hardly any cocks among them. Now was there a due proportion of each sex, it would seem very improbable that any one district should produce such numbers of these little birds; and much more when only one half of the species appears: therefore we may conclude that the fringilla calebes, for some good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in which the sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of sexes in this species of birds should be interrupted in winter; since in many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see "Fauna Suecica," p. 85, and "Sys

M

tema Naturæ," p. 318. I see every winter vast flights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks.*

Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of the British singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable one; since the matter of food is a great regulator of the actions and proceedings of the brute creation: there is but one that can be set in competition with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one circumstance which you advance :-that "when they have thus feasted, they again separate into small parties of five or six, and get the best fare they can within a certain district, having no inducement to go in quest of freshturned earth." Now if you mean that the business of congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat-sowing to the season of barley and oats, it is not the case with us; for larks and chaffinches, and particularly linnets, flock and congregate as much in the very dead of winter, as when the husbandman is busy with his ploughs and harrows.

Surely there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and retire to some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the former pair, and that the hens are forward with egg before they retire, I myself, when I was a sportsman, have often experienced. It cannot indeed be denied that now and then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or even young birds, discovered in some part or other of this island: but then they are always mentioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the common course of things; but as to redwings and fieldfares, no sports

* See Letter XIII. to Mr. Pennant on this subject.-ED.

man or naturalist has ever yet, that I could hear, pretended to have found the nest or young of those species in any part of these kingdoms. And I the more admire at this instance as extraordinary, since, to all appearance, the same food in summer as well as in winter might support them here which maintains their congeners, the blackbirds and thrushes, did they choose to stay the summer through. Hence it appears that it is not food alone which determines some species of birds with regard to their stay or departure. Fieldfares and redwings disappear sooner or later, according as the warm weather comes on earlier or later; for I well remember, after that dreadful winter, 1739-40, that cold north-east winds continued to blow on through April and May, and that these kinds of birds (what few remained of them) did not depart as usual, but were seen lingering about till the beginning of June.

The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the birds above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists that have written professedly the natural history of particular countries. Now, as to the fieldfare, Linnæus, in his "Fauna Suecica," says of it, that "it builds in the largest trees"

-"maximis in arboribus nidificat;" and of the redwing he says, in the same place, that "it builds in the middle of shrubs or hedges, and lays six bluish-green eggs, with black spots,' "_" nidificat in mediis arbusculis, sive sepibus: ova sex cæruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis." Hence we may be assured that fieldfares and redwings breed in Sweden. Scopoli says, in his "Annus Primus," of the woodcock, that "it comes to us about the vernal equinox, and, after pairing, it builds its nest in marshy places, and lays

its eggs, -"nupta ad nos venit circa æquinoctium vernale;" meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And afterwards he adds,-" nidificat in paludibus alpinis: ova ponit 3 5." It does not appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria; but he says: "This bird dwells in the northern regions in summer, where, too, it generally builds its nest. As winter comes on it goes farther south, leaving this about the October full-moon. After pairing, it usually comes back to the north about the full March moon."—" Avis hæc septentrionalium provinciarum æstivo tempore incola est; ubi plerumque nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme australiores provincias petit: hinc circa plenilunium mensis Octobris plerumque Austriam transmigrat. Tune rursus circa plenilunium potissimum mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales provincias redit." For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see "Elenchus," &c. p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the migration of woodcocks; though little is proved concerning the place of breeding.

There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks of this present very wet weather, seven inches and a-half of rain, which is more than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past in that part of the world. A mean quantity in that county for one year is twenty inches and a-half.

SELBORNE, Dec. 20, 1770.

JOU are, I know, no great friend to migration; and the well attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them.*

But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall: during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season; and these vast migrations consist not only of hirun

* Mr. Barrington seems to have confirmed our author in his idea that the swallow hybernates. Nowhere else does he express such decided opinions on the subject as in this Letter. -ED.