L E T T E R VII.
TO THE SAM E.
D E A R SIR, R ingmer, near L ewes, 061. 8, 1770.
I am glad to hear that Kuckalm is to furnilh you with the birds of
Jamaica; a fight of the hirundines of that hot and diftant ifland
would be a great entertainment to me.
The Anni of Scopoli are now in my poffeffion ; and I have read
the Annus Primus with fatisfadtion : for though fome parts of this
work are exceptionable, and he may advance fome miftaken
ohfervations ; yet the ornithology of fo diftant a country as Carniola
is very curious. Men that undertake only one diftriA are much'
y mote likely to advance natural knowledge than thofe that grafp at
more than they can poflibly be acquainted with : every kingdom,
every province, Jhould have it’s own monographer.
The reafon perhaps why he mentions nothing of Ray’s Ornithology
may be the extreme poverty and diftance of his country, into
which the works of our great naturalift may have never yet found
their way. You have doubts, I know, whether this Ornithology
is genuine, and really the work of Scopoli: as to myfelf, I think I
difcover ftrong tokens of authenticity ; the ftyle correfponds with
that of his Entomology' ; and his charaAers of his Ordines and Genera
are many of them new, expreffive, and mafterly. He has ventured
to alter fome of the Linnaan genera with fufficient fhew of reafon.
It might perhaps be mere accident that you faw fo many fwifts
and no fwallows at Staines; becaufe, in my long obfervation of
thofe
thofe birds, I never could difcover the leaft degree of rivalry or
hoftility between the fpecies.
Ray remarks that birds of the gallhue order, as cocks and hens,
partridges, and pheafants, See. are pulveratrices, fuch as duft
themfelves, ufing that method of cleanfing their feathers, and
ridding themfelves of their vermin. As far as I can obferve, many
birds that duft themfelves never wafh : and I once thought that
thofe birds that wadi themfelves would never duft; but here I find
myfelf miftaken; for common houfe-fparrows are great pulveratrices,
being frequently feen grovelling and wallowing in dufty roads;
and yet they are great walhers. Does not the Iky lark duft ?
Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers . take one method
of purification from thefe pulveratrices ? becaufe I find from travellers
of credit, that i f a ftriA muflulman is journeying in a fandy
defert where no water is to be found, at ftated hours heftrips off his
clothes, and moft fcrupuloufly rubs his body over with fand or
duft.;
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the
neft of a fmall bird on the ground; and that it was fed by the
little bird. I went to fee this extraordinary phenomenon, and
found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the neft of a titlark:
it was become vaftly too big for it’s neft, appearing
— — — — — in tenui re
Majores pennas nido extendiffe — —-
and was very fierce and pugnacious, purfuing my finger, as I
teazed it, for many feet from the neft, and fparring and buffering
with it’s wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared
at a diftance, hovering about with meat in it’s mouth, and expref-
fing the greateft folicitude.
In