7?
Thefe, NATURE’S works, the curious mind employ,
Infpire a Toothing melancholy joy :
As fancy warms, a pleafing kind of pain
Steals o’er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein !
Each rural light, each found, each fmell, combine;
The tinkling fheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that fcents the fwelling breeze,
Or cottage-chimney fmoking through the trees.
The chilling night-dews fa ll:— away, retire;
For fee, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire'!
Thus, e’er night’s veil had half obfcur’d the Iky,
T h ’ impatient damfel hung her lamp on high :
True to the fignal, by love’s meteor led,
Leander haften’d to his Hero’s b.edfe.
I am, &c.
L E T T E R XXV.
TO T H E S A M E .
D E A R S IR , Selborn? , A u g . 30, 1769.
I t gives me fatisfaclion to find that my account of the oufel
migration pleafes you. You put a very lhrewd queftion when you
alk me how I know that their autumnal migration is fouthward ?
i The light o f the female glow-worm (as (he often crawls up the (talk o f a grafs to
make herfelf more confpicuous) is a fignal to the male, which is a fender duiky
fea r abate*
k See the ftory o f Hero and Leander•
Was
Was hot candour and opennefs the very life of natural hiftory, I
fhould pafs over this query juft as a fly commentator does over
a crabbed paffage in a clafiic ; but common ingenuoufnefs obliges
me to confefs, not without fome degree of fhame, that I only rea-
foned in that cafe from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds
migrate from the northward to us, to* partake of our milder winters,
and return to the northward again when the rigorous cold abates,
fb I concluded that the ring-oufels did the fame, as well as their
congeners the fieldfares ■, and efpecially as ring-oufels are known
to haunt cold mountainous countries but I have good reafon to
fufpeft fince that they may come to us from the weftward; be-
caufe I hear, from very good authority, that they breed on
Dartmore; and that they forfake that wild diftrift about the time
that our vifitors appear, and do- not return till late in the fpring.
I have taken* a great deal of pains about your Jdlicafia and mine,
with a white ftroke over it’s eye and a tawny rump. I have fur-
veyed it alive and dead, and have procured feveral fpecimens;
and am perfeftly perfuaded myfelf (and truft you will foon be
convinced of the fame) that it is no more nor lefs than the
puffer arundinaceus minor of Roy. This bird) by fome means or other,
feems ,to; be entirely omitted in the Britijh Zoology; and one reafon
probably was* becaufe it is fo ftrangely elaffed in Ray, who ranges
it among his picis affines, It ought no doubt to have gone among-
his avicula caudd unicolore-, and among your flendef-billed fmall
birds of the fame divifion. Linnteus might with great propriety
have put it into his genus of moimilla; and the motdcilh Jalicaria of
his fauna fuecica feems to come the neareft to it. It is no uncommon
bird, haunting the fides of ponds and rivers where there is
covert, and the reeds and fedges of moors. The country people
in fome places call it the fedge-bird. It lings incefiantly night and