Speaking of the fwift, 1 that page fays “ it’s drink the dew,"
whereas it fliould be “ it drinks on the w i n g f o r all the fwallow
kind lip their water as they fweep over the face of pools or rivers ;
like Virgil's bees, they drink flying; “ jiumina fumma Ubant.” It*
this method o f drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.
Of the fedge-bird m be pleafed to fay it lings moll part of the
night; it’s notes are hurrying, but not unpleafing, and imitative
of feveral birds; as the fparrow, fwallow, Iky-lark. When it happens
to be lilent in the night, by throwing a ftone or clod into the
bulhes where it fits you immediately fet it a finging; or in other
words, though it flumbers fometimes, yet as foon as it is awakened
it reafiumes it’s fong..
L E T T E R XL.
TO THE- S AM E -
D E A R STR , Selborne, Sept, z , 17741-
B e f o r e your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been
remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female
fwallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; fo that there
was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli : and be-
lides, as they were then always in pairs, and bulled in the employ
of nidification, there could be no room for miftaking the fexes,
nor the individuals of different chimnies the one for the other.
From all my obfervations, it conftantly appeared that each fex
lias the long feathers in it’s tail that give it that forked lhape;
with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male
than in that of the female.
Nightingales, when their young firlt come abroad, and are
helplefs, make a plaintive and a jarring noife; and alfo a lhapping
or cracking, purfuing people along the hedges as they walk ;
thele laft founds feem intended for menace and defiance. -
The grafshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of fummer.
Swans turn white the fecond year, and breed the third.
Weafels prey on moles, as appears by their being fometimes
caught in mole-traps.
Sparrow-hawks fometimes breed in old crows’ nefts, and the
keftril in churches and ruins.
There are fuppofed to be two forts of eels in the ifland of Ely.
The threads fometimes difeovered in eels are perhaps their young ;
the generation of eels is very dark and myfterious.
Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and feem. never to fettle on
trees.
When redflarts Ihake their tails they move them horizontally,
as dogs do when they fawn : the tail of a wagtail, when in motion,
bobs up and down, like that o f a jaded horle.
Hedge-lparrows have a remarkable flirt with their wings in
breeding-time; as foon as frofty mornings come they make a very
piping plaintive noife.
Many birds which become filent about Midfummer reafiume
their notes again in September; as the thrulh, blackbird, woodlark,
willow-wren, & c .; hence Augujl is by much the moll mute
month, the fpring, fummer, and autumn through. Are birds
induced to ling again becaufe the temperament of autumn re-
fembles that of fpring?
Linnaus