boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (Hirundines apodes 2) among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead; but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.

Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk-cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach; and that many people found swallows among the rubbish: but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative; but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urbica) were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my Fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty-ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October.

How strange is it, that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same life with the swallow and housemartin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle. of October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. The martins and red

[Cypselus Apus, ILL.]

3 In making use of the above remark, under the head of Swift, in the second volume of his British Zoology, 1768, p. 246, Pennant adds: "For these, and several other observations, we owe our acknowledgements to the Reverend Mr. White, of Selborne, Hampshire.”—E. T. B.

4 Upwards of a hundred of these birds collected and apparently going off, were seen on the thirteenth of November, 1831, at Dover.-W. Y.

wing fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds!

A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the Alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the Motacil'a Trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods 5.

The Stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the flycatcher. There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together 6.

I perceive there are more than one species of the

3 The Motacilla or Sylvia Trochilus does not make a sibilous shivering noise. The bird meant is the Sylvia sylvicola, called by Bechstein Sylv. sibilatrix.-W. H.

6 This little visitant, the Muscicapa Grisola, LINN., arrives about the same time as the whitethroat and redstart, and during the period of incubation seeks the shelter afforded by our dwellings; trusting, like the martin and swallow, to the forbearance, while it seems to court the protection, of man. Building most commonly, as White subsequently describes it (in Letter XL.), at the end of a plate (a term employed in Hampshire and Surrey to signify a beam, or rafter, that projects a little from a house or building,) the bird has thence derived two of its local names in some districts it is called rafter, in others it is known as the beam bird. In open exposed situations it has also acquired the name of bee bird, on account of its being very destructive to hive bees; not only taking them flying, but waiting for them at the tee hole, or mouth of the hive. But in sheltered places, near houses, and in villages, where insects abound, it appears to be principally known as an expert flycatcher.-G. D.

Mr. Ren

Elsewhere the spotted flycatcher is known by other names. nie informs us that in Kent it is called the post bird, from the habit described in the text. In Northamptonshire, according to Morton, “This, though called a bird without a name by Mr. Willughby, is well known, and vulgarly called the copweb; as usually building in the corners of walls, and the like places, where spiders weave their webs." A MS. note by Morton, in the copy of his work in the library of the British Museum, adds, "and also building its nest in part of copwebs, interwoven with moss, straws, and the like."-E. T. B.

Motacilla Trochilus: Mr. Derham supposes, in Ray's Philosophical Letters, that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name.

Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the blackcap (Motacilla Atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not; I think there is no doubt of it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter 8. They are delicate songsters9.

Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.

I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more;

7 [Curruca Atricapilla, BECHST.]

9 A fine cock blackcap, which I purchased in the bird market at Paris, in September, exhibited the migrative agitation about the end of that month, again before Christmas, again in February, and finally on the first of April, beginning at sunset to leap and flutter about the cage for several hours every night, and remaining quiet and frequently sleeping during the day. The agitation continued some weeks each time. I would infer from this that the species migrates more than once after leaving our shores. Dr. Heineken informs us that it is stationary at Madeira consequently Sir W. Jardine is wrong in thinking our birds retire thither; but we have no statements respecting the countries they do visit in winter. They certainly go farther south than Gibraltar, where they are only summer visitants. Mr. Lewin, as we are informed by Dr. Latham, once shot a blackcap in January near Dartford, in Kent, which will qualify Mr. White's statement that they are never seen in the winter. RENNIE.

An exception, such as the one quoted in the preceding note, can scarcely be regarded as militating against a general rule: in the words of the adage, the exception may rather be said to prove the rule.E. T. B.

The delightful song of the blackcap is beautifully described by our author in Letter XL. The description there given was copied by Pennant, in the third edition of his British Zoology, vol. i. p. 375. The blackcap, as Mr. Mitford has remarked, is classed very highly by Daines Barrington in his scale of singing birds.-E. T. B.

and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it be a nondescript species or not.

rats.

I suspect much there may be two species of waterRay says, and Linnæus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers exactly to the Mus amphibius of Linnæus (See Syst. Nat.), which he says, "natat in fossis et urinatur." I should be glad to procure one "plantis palmatis." Linnæus seems to be in a puzzle about his Mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his Mus terrestris; which, if it be, as he allows, the "Mus agrestis capite grandi, brachyuros,” of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat, both in size, make, and manner of life 10.

10 Willughby was the originator of the confusion alluded to. He described the water-rat as having its toes connected together by intervening webs; and his description was published by Ray in the Synopsis Quadrupedum. Linnæus, believing that such authorities were to be relied on, admitted a rat-like animal, having its hinder feet webbed, into the several editions of his Fauna Suecica; placing it, in the first of them, where its technical characters directed him, in the genus Castor. Subsequently he associated it with the rats; and referred to it as of doubtful existence, as being perhaps inaccurately described, and as probably to be referred to his Mus terrestris. There can now be no doubt that he was correct in regarding the large rat with a hairy tail of moderate length, which frequents ditches in the summer time, and swims and dives well, and which has on these accounts acquired the name of amphibius, as identical with the one described by him as the terrestris, as having the same outward form and colours, and as being found in burrows: the winter nest of the species is described by White in Letter XXVI. Willughby's error must have been occasioned by his having assumed from a certain habit that a certain structure which he regarded as indicated by it must necessarily be coexistent with it: but he should not have forgotten, even for an instant, that natural history is a science of observation, and not of theoretical deductions.

The Mus agrestis capite grandi, brachyuros, of Ray, is indeed widely different from the water rat: it is the short-tailed field mouse or vole, Arvicola agrestis, FLEM.; the water rat, or rather water vole, being the Arv. amphibia, DESM. The genera Arvicola and Mus do not belong even to the same primary section of the rodents.-E. T. B.

As to the Falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me. Though mutilated, "qualem dices... antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiæ 11 !”

It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum 12.

The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.

LETTER XI.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, September 9, 1767. It will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to the Falco. As to its weight, breadth, &c., I wish I had set them down at the time but to the best of my remembrance, it weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of its eyelids a bright yellow. As

"The species proved to be the Falco peregrinus of authors; it is common also in the United States, and was called by Wilson the duck hawk. In this country it breeds principally among the rocks and cliffs of the sea-shore, and preys upon water-fowl.-W. Y.

12 The naturalist may occasionally meet with rarities in such places; and I recollect seeing in Wiltshire the remains of a specimen of the rare sparrow owl (Noctua passerina, SAV.) thus nailed up to a barn-door, though not in a fit condition to be set up in a cabinet.-RENNIE.