little architect'. Again, the regular nest of the house martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice, may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived as to conform to the obstruction, and becomes flat or oval or compressed.

In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nuthatch (Sitta Europaea), which live much on hazel-nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were, in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post where nuthatches have been known to haunt, and have always found that those birds have readily penetrated them. While at work they make a

It would appear that there is in this case a kind of free agency, if the term may be allowed, on the part of the bird; or at least an instinctive adaptation to circumstances and locality. I have a wren's nest, which I took in the farm yard at Malthouse, near Hartley, Hants. A corner of the thatch of the pigsty was broken off, and the little architect constructed its nest so perfectly to resemble, and make good the corner of the thatch, that it was really difficult to distinguish the one from the other. The opening was in the inside under the thatch. It was not obliged, in that district, to construct its nest of straws for want of moss.

It seems to me that the use of bright and fresh materials in the rural districts, and of those of a different or more sombre description in the metropolitan, is to answer the same purpose-to elude observation. The nests brought to me by boys from the Hampstead fields, possess every character of those sent from Hampshire, with the exception that the Hampshire specimens are brighter. The whitethroat's nest from Hampshire, and that taken in the Marylebone fields, were both alike constructed of the dried stalks of Galium Aparine.-G. D.

rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.

You that understand both the theory and practical part of music may best inform us why harmony or melody should so strangely affect some men, as it were by recollection, for days after a concert is over. What I mean the following passage will most readily explain: "Præhabebat porrò vocibus humanis instrumentisque harmonicis musicam illam avium: non quod aliâ quoque non delectaretur; sed quod ex musicâ humanâ relinqueretur in animo continens quædam, attentionemque et somnum conturbans, agitatio; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac mutationes illæ sonorum et consonantiarum euntque redeuntque per phantasiam :— cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium, quæ, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde internam facultatem commovere."Gassendus in Vitâ Peireskii.

This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing my own case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but never could so well express. When I hear fine music I am haunted with passages therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking, which, by their importunity, give me more uneasiness than pleasure: elegant lessons still tease my imagination, and recur irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even when I am desirous of thinking of more serious matters.

I am, &c.

LETTER LVII.

TO THE SAME.

A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, which I have great reason to think is the pettychaps1: it is common in some parts of the kingdom; and I have received formerly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the whitethroat, but has a more white or rather silvery breast and belly; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and mown walks.

One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me that, in the beginning of May, and

'This bird certainly was not the pettychaps, which has not the manners here described. The detail exactly answers to the blue-gray or lesser whitethroat (Sylvia silviella) of some English authors, which I have demonstrated to be the Sylvia Curruca by priority of name, la fauvette babillarde of French writers, and bianchetto of Scopoli. I suspect that the name linty-white in North Britain belongs to this bird, though attributed by Bewick to the chiffchaff, which I have never been able to meet with in the north of England, though it may be found in some parts thereof; but its colour can in no ways deserve that name: whereas the white breast of the blue-gray cannot fail to attract notice. I have given a full description and account of it in a note on page 173. In Yorkshire the yellowhammer is called goldfinch; the goldfinch, redcap; the chaffinch, bull's-pink or bullfinch; the ox bird or large titmouse, blackcap; the hedge warbler, cuddy; the brown wren, tomtit; the yellow wren, small-straw; and the whin chat, grass chat: synonyms which I have not seen recorded. I cannot find that the true blackcap or the blue-gray have any name in Yorkshire, where they seem to escape observation amongst the lower orders, which is singular, considering how loud the blackcap sings all summer, and how much it attacks the fruit.-W. H.

about ten minutes before eight o'clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house swallows, thirty at least, he supposes, perching on a willow that hung over the verge of James Knight's upper pond. His attention was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight, pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the water. In this situation he watched them till he could see no longer. Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to suspect that house swallows have some strong attachment to water, independent of the matter of food; and, though they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and rivers during the uncomfortable months of winter.

The

One of the keepers of Wolmer Forest sent me a peregrine falcon, which he shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a wood-pigeon. The Falco peregrinus, or haggard falcon, is a noble species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter, 1767, one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Faringdon, and sent by me to Mr. Pennant into North Wales. Since that time I have met with none till now. specimen mentioned above was in fine preservation, and not injured by the shot; it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing, and twenty-one from beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and a half standing weight. This species is very robust, and wonderfully formed for rapine: its breast was plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick, and brawny; and its legs remarkably short and well set: the feet were armed with most formidable, sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of the bill were yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was thick and hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near the end of the upper

See my tenth and eleventh [and twelfth] Letters to that gentleman.

mandible on each side: its tail, or train, was short in proportion to the bulk of its body: yet the wings, when closed, did not extend to the end of the train. From its large and fair proportions it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was not permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of prey, which are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were many barleycorns, which probably came from the crop of the wood pigeon, on which it was feeding when shot: for voracious birds do not eat grain; but, when devouring their quarry, with undistinguishing vehemence swallow bones and feathers, and all matters, indiscriminately. This falcon was probably driven from the mountains of North Wales or Scotland, where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep snows that had lately fallen.