Page images
PDF
EPUB

whether the heronry consist of a whole grove or wood, or only of a few trees.

It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about the Caprimulgus: all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters sitting as well as flying; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its mouth and throat.

If ever I saw any thing like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning: at first there was a vast fog; but by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows (Hirundines rustica) clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea: after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler.

I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once only some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton Hall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first week in January, he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at

Oxford than elsewhere: is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else?

When I used to rise in a morning last autumn, and see the swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification: with delight to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on their minds by their great Creator; and with some degree of mortification, when I reflected that, after all our pains and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain to what regions they do migrate; and are still farther embarrassed to find that some do not actually migrate at all.

These reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination, that they became productive of a composition that may perhaps amuse you for a quarter of an hour when next I have the honour of writing to you.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER XXIV.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, May 29, 1769.

THE Scarabæus Fullo' I know very well, having seen it in collections; but have never been able to discover

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

one wild in its natural state. Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on the seacoast2.

On the 13th of April, I went to the sheep-down, where the ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south; and was much pleased to see three birds about the usual spot. We shot a cock and a hen; they were plump and in high condition. The hen had but very small rudiments of eggs within her, which proves they are late breeders; whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that time. In their crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested. In autumn they feed on haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed one of these birds, and found it juicy and well flavoured. It is remarkable, that they make but a few days stay in their spring visit, but rest near a fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs and two autumns, are most punctual in their return; and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the writers who supposed they never were to be seen in any of the southern counties.

One of my neighbours lately brought me a new Salicaria, which, at first, I suspected might have proved your willow lark3, but on a nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincolnshire. My bird

2 All the specimens of this noble chafer that have yet been captured in England, and they are very far from numerous, have occurred on the coast of Kent. Dover seems to be the middle point of their range, from which they extend westward as far as Hythe, and northward to Sandwich. Mr. Stephens has recorded the capture, by a lady, of no less than eight specimens in one year, in the neighbourhood of Sandwich; a number probably nearly equal to all the others that are known to have been at any time taken in this country.-E. T. B.

3 For this Salicaria see Letter, August 30, 1769. [XXV.]

The seat of Sir Joseph Banks, at which Pennant remained on a visit in May, 1767.-E. T. B.

I describe thus: "It is a size less than the grasshopper lark; the head, back, and coverts of the wings, of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the grasshopper lark; over each eye is a milk white stroke; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yellowish white; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp pointed; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked." The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed sparrow that he took it for one; and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of Locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He also procured me a grasshopper lark.

This is an error which runs through most of our books of ornithology. The reed bunting, commonly called the reed sparrow, has no song. Like its congeners, in this country, it has only a monotonous cry. The bird above mentioned, Salicaria Phragmitis, or sedge warbler, is perpetually singing by night, if disturbed, as well as by day, and the reed bunting has often got the credit of its song. The sedge warbler is very abundant at Spofforth, but I have never discovered the reed warbler, its near congener, here. Bewick has confounded these two species, and has given a plate and description of the sedge warbler, under the name of the reed warbler, which last has not been observed north of the Trent. The reed warbler is of a uniform reddish brown with a little olive cast on the upper parts, and whitish on the belly; the sedge warbler has a light stripe over the eye, and the middle of each feather, on the upper parts, dashed with very dark brown. I have found its nest on the ground in a tuft of rushes, in long grasses and herbs, being made fast to their stalks, in a dead hedge, but most frequently in thorn fences, and low bushes, and willows, often in the currant bushes in gardens near a wet ditch or stream. The reed wren builds in general higher, sometimes in a poplar tree, often in the tall lilacs in the Regent's Park: our books mostly state willows, and that it builds in the reeds, but it often prefers a tall bush or a small tree if there be one in the neighbourhood. Its bill is stronger than that of the sedge warbler, and it seems to be less patient of cold. Its nest is deeper. The song of individuals of the two species is very similar, and cannot easily be distinguished. Mr. White calls the sedge warbler a delicate polyglott; and speaks of its song as very superior to that of the whitethroat, in which I can by no means agree with him. Its notes are very hurried, some parts of its song are good, but others singularly harsh and disagreeable. They are greedy birds, and in confinement are apt to die from excessive fat; becoming so unwieldy as to hurt and bruise themselves by tumbling down.-W. H.

The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came there, and whence? is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that subject, little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa, and the south of Europe; and then break down the isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent piece of machinery : it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god! "Incredulus odi."

[blocks in formation]

WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the May-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;

6 The angler's May-fly, the Ephemera vulgata, LINN. comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water, about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c.

« PreviousContinue »