A little yellow bird* (the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray is called, in your Zoology, the fly-catcher. † There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.

I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla which visits us. Mr. Derham supposes, in

that they take shelter in the first fisherman's boat they fall in with; sometimes so weak as hardly to be able to fly from one end of the boat to the other. There is, therefore, no doubt that the swallow is a summer visitant with us, arriving between the middle of April and the first week in May: the swallow, Hirundo urbica, first; the sand martin, Hirundo riparia, next; followed closely by the house martin, Hirundo apus; and lastly comes the swift, Hirundo rustica.-ED.

* The yellow wood-wren (Sylvia sibilatrix, Selby and Jennings) arrives about the end of April, and betakes itself to the woods and thickets. Its flight is rapid and undulating, gliding among the branches with great agility in pursuit of insects, which it follows on the wing, chirping as it flies along. It perches on lofty branches of trees. Its song is modulated and short, being a repetition of twee, twee, the first notes prolonged, finishing with a shrill shaking note, which, says Sweet, "may be heard at a great distance off, and never can be confounded with that of any other bird."-ED.

†The grey fly-catcher (Muscicapa grisola). Mr. Durham Weir, a correspondent of M'Gillivray's, watched a pair of these birds while they fed their young 537 times in one day,their motions being so rapid that he could not keep his eye off the nest. Before feeding their young, they alighted on a tree for a few seconds, looked round them, and shooting forwards by short jerks, they caught the flying insects; at other times they hovered in the air, and dropped like a hawk on their prey.-ED.

The willow-wren (Motacilla, now Sylvia, trochilus), here described, is a delicate and active little bird, its soft plumage

Ray's "Philos. Letters," that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name.

Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate songsters.

Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.

I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plentiful in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more; and will endeavour to put it out of doubt, whether it be a nondescript species or not.

I suspect much there may be two species of waterrats. Ray says, and Linnæus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer is brown blended with yellow. It is a constant visitant from April to September. Its song, whilst perched on the branch of some tall hedge or shrub, is a pleasing shivering note, somewhat plaintive, and resembling the sounds whe-u-ee, repeated eight or nine times. The three species in question are Sylvia trochilus, Latham, mentioned in the text; Sylvia loquar, or chiff-chaff, mentioned in Letter XVI; and Sylvia sibilatrix of the preceding page.-ED.

* It is very well established that the black-cap is a summer visitant, arriving in the South early in April, and in Scotland in the beginning of May. Its song continues till the end of June, and is, says Montagu, "very little inferior to the nightingale, except in the variety of its notes."-ED.

and diver: it answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnæus, which, he says, swims and dives in ditches, "natat in fossis et urinatur." I should be glad to procure "one with the feet feathering out like a palm," "plantis palmatis." Linnæus seems to be in a puzzle about his mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his mus terrestris, which if it be, as he allows, the "mus agrestis capite grandi brachyuros," a field-mouse, with "a large head and a short tail," is widely different from the water-rat, both in size, make, and manner of life.*

As to the falco,† which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me. "Though mutilated, such as you would say it had formerly been, seeing that the remains are what they are," "qualem dices antehac fuisse, tales

cum sint reliquiæ !"

It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum.

The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven

The brown rat (Mus decumens), according to Bell, takes freely to the water, and swims with great ease; a fact Mr. White seems not to have known.-ED.

† The peregrine falcon, being a northern bird, is better known to northern naturalists than to those of the southern counties, where it is only an occasional visitant. It breeds on the shelving cliffs and precipitous rocks of the coast of Scotland, from the Bass Rock to the Murray Frith.-ED.

country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.

August 4, 1767.

[In severe weather, fieldfares, red-wings, skylarks, and tit-larks, resort to watered meadows for food; the latter wades up to its belly in pursuit of the pupa of insects, and runs along upon the floating grass and weeds. Many gnats are on the snow near the water; these support the birds in part.

Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour, for though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the latter.

Red-starts, fly-catchers, and black-caps, arrive early in April. If these little delicate beings are birds of passage, how could they, feeble as they seem, bear up against such storms of snow and rain, and make their way through such meteorous turbulences, as one should suppose would embarrass and retard the most hardy and resolute of the winged nation ?* Yet they keep their appointed times and seasons; and in spite of frosts and winds return to their stations periodically, as if they had met with nothing to

The reader's wonder that birds so feeble on the wing should fly such vast distances, will cease when he considers the resting-places they find on their journey. "When the quails cross the Mediterranean for the African coast, towards the end of September," says St. Pierre, "they avail themselves of a northerly wind to take their departure, and flap one wing, while they present the other to the gale-thus half sail, half oar-they graze the billows of the Mediterranean with their feathered rumps, and hasten to bury themselves in the sands of Africa." There are few birds less adapted for such a voyage than the quail.-ED.

obstruct them. The withdrawing and reappearance of the short-winged summer birds is a very puzzling circumstance in natural history!

When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the young wasps in their maggot state with the highest glee and delight. Any insecteating bird would do the same. Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects: thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female ants full of eggs with much satisfaction.]-OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE.