in earneft, he pours forth very fweet, but inward melody, and
exprefies great variety of foft and gentle modulations, fuperior
perhaps to thofe of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted.
Black-caps moftly haunt orchards and gardens; while they
warble their throats are wonderfully diltended.
The fong of the redftart is fuperior, though fomewhat like that
-of the white-throat: feme birds'have a few more notes than others.
Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock
lings from morning to night: he affeds neighbourhoods, and
avoids folitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houfes;
with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole.
The fly-catcher is of all our fummer birds the moft mute and
the moft familiar ; it alfo appears the laft of any. It builds in a
vine, or a fweetbriar, againft the wall of an houfe, or in the hole
o f a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often clofe to
the poll of a door where people are going in and out all day long.
This bird does not make the leaft pretention to fong, but ufes a
little inward wailing note when it thinks it’s young in danger from
cats or other annoyances : it breeds but once, and retires early.
Selborne parifh alone can and has exhibited at times more than
half the birds that are-ever feen in z\\ Sweden; the former has produced
more than one'hundred and twenty fpecies, the latter only
two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add alfo that it has Ihewn
near half the fpecies that were ever known in Great-Britian p.
On a retrofped, I obferve that my long letter carries with it a
quaint and magifterial air, and is very fententious; but, when I
recoiled that you requefted ftridure and anecdote, I hope you will
pardon the didadic manner for the fake of the information it may
happen to contain.
P Sweden 221, Great-Britian 252 fpecies.
L E T T E R
l e t t e r XLI.
TO THE S AME .
fofr K-uT k- f CUui0US :nquiry t0 trace out how thofe fpecies of
i§> «**
<h. r o b » f t mnch rrfm-bling ,he hard race
Zioi ST?/1?br *s' °fe”"r SH e E BNIsWftin l m m
1 have no reafon to doubt but that the foft-bifled birds
3 C f"ba n « S » B date. All the fpecies of wagtails in fevere weather haunt (hallo
“ *r ■ ** « S I where (he, B H K S k A
‘Hedge-fyarrows frequent finks and gutters in I A
-here they pick up crumbs and o t h e r ^ L l I B Aa
weather they procure worms, which are ftirrmg every month fo
he year, as any one may fee that will only be at fhe^rouble of
a ing a candle to a grafs-plot on any mild winter’s night Red
»breads and wrens in the winter haunt it-houfes,
’ Derham't Phyfico-theologp, p. 23J,
P
where