that period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and under hedges.

The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a distance. The Welsh call it pen y llwyn, the head, or master of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he haunts; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. In general, he is very successful in the defence of his family: but once I observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a missel-thrush; the dams defended their mansion with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.*

In the season of nidification, the wildest birds are comparatively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are continually frequented; † and the missel-thrush, though most shy and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my garden, close to a walk where people are passing all day long.

Wall-fruit abounds with me this year; but my grapes, that used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond all precedent and this is not the worst of the story; for the same ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured the more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be very large.

Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half

* No kind of animal food is despised by this carnivorous depredator. Young lambs, poultry, eggs, fish, carrion, insects, and fruit, all come within the range of his voracious appetite. He is a great enemy to all young birds; and, in many places, commits extensive ravages on the brood and eggs of game. In various places of England and Ireland, a reward is given for their heads, at the quarter sessions. The jay is another beautiful bird; but, like his congener, the magpie, is a most destructive knave amongst smaller birds and their eggs. ED.

+ During our residence in Fife, a pair of ring-doves incubated in a larch tree, close to a walk in the garden, and not more than twenty-five yards from the house, although this walk was frequented many times during the day, and there brought up a brood. These young doves built in a tree not far distant from the others. The old birds returned in the following summer, and continued to breed there every season while I remained; as did also part of their progeny, for we had three nests within the flower garden alone, which was next to the house, and without any wall or hedge intervening.-ED.

176

SUBSISTENCE OF BIRDS IN WINTER.

disqualify me for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose all the pleasing notices and little intimations arising from rural sounds; and May is to me as silent and mute, with respect to the notes of birds, &c. as August. My eyesight is, thank God, quick and good; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at times, disabled,

And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

LETTER LXIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft-billed birds, that continue with us the winter through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wry-neck (so much resembling the hardy race of woodpeckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts, without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while he keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know. *

I have no reason to doubt, but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails, in severe weather, haunt shallow streams, near their spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus phryganeæ, &c.

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings; and in mild weather, they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see, that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Redbreasts and wrens, in the winter, haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies, that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But

*This bird inhabits Britain, from the Landsend to the Shetland Islands, as also Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is sometimes migratory. See our note, page 42.- ED.

+ See Derham's Physico-Theology, p. 235.

Both redbreasts and wrens approach villages and towns in winter, and will eat crumbs of bread, and other farinaceous substances. We

the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.

Every species of titmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill, between the hard and the soft, between the Linnæan genera of fringilla and motacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour, in the severest seasons, to houses and neighbourhoods, and that is the delicate longtailed titmouse, which is almost as minute as the goldencrowned wren: but the blue titmouse, or nun, (parus cæruleus,) the cole-mouse, (parus ater,) the great black-headed titmouse, (fringillago,) and the marsh titmouse, (parus palustris,) all resort, at times, to buildings; and in hard weather particularly. The great titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses; and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards, (to my no small delight and admiration,) draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance. +

The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of

have seen these birds feeding along with domestic poultry, during snow storms, and even in frosty weather; on which occasions they become very tame.-ED.

* We have never heard of this beautiful little bird approaching the habitations of man during storms, although its congeners are as familiar as the robin during a nard winter, and will feed on bread, or other farinaceous diet. In the severe spring of 1824, great numbers, of various species, visited our grounds, and remained close to the house during the time the snow lay, mixing and feeding with the poultry. We have more than once seen a little hero of a blue titmouse disputing the right of a hen to feed from the same dish with him. In Loudon's Magazine, a correspondent says that this species destroys bees, "which it effects by rapping with its bill at the entrance of the hive, and killing the insects as they come out. I was informed that a whole hive was in this manner quickly destroyed."- ED.

Mr Gavin Inglis, of Strathendry Bleachfield, near Leslie, Fife, informed us, that he saw sparrows similarly employed on the thatch of one of his stacks; and that, finding their efforts ineffectual when exerted singly, they accomplished their end by uniting their strength, several of them hung to one straw, and thus pulled it out. -ED.

M

flesh; for it frequently picks bones on dunghills; it is a vast admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mousetraps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well entertained with the seeds on the head of a sunflower. The blue, marsh, and great titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and oat straws from the sides of ricks.

How the wheatear and whin-chat support themselves in winter, cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries: most probable it is, that their maintenance arises from the aurelia of the lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness.

LETTER LXIV.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, March 9, 1775.

DEAR SIR,-Some future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I hope, extend his visits to the kingdom of Ireland; a new field, and a country little known to the naturalist.* He will not, it is to be wished, undertake that tour unaccompanied by a botanist, because the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently examined; and the southerly counties of so mild an island may possibly afford some plants little to be expected within the British dominions.† A person of a thinking turn of mind will draw many just remarks from the modern improvements of that

* Among the newly described species indigenous to these kingdoms, is Sabine's snipe, scolopax Sabini, which was discovered in Ireland. It has now been identified as a native of that country.-ED.

t In Cunnemara, a wild district of Galway, Ireland, Mr Mackay of Dublin discovered the erica Mediterranea, growing on a declivity, by a stream, in boggy ground, at the foot of Urrisbeg mountain, occupying a space of about half a mile; and also the Menziesia polifolia. These two plants had not before been found in Britain or Ireland, being only known to the botanist as indigenous to the south of Europe; and Mr Bree discovered the iris tuberosa near Cork. The eriocaulon septangulare abounds in all the small lakes of Cunnemara. The rare arabis ciliata, the Menzièsia polifolia, the saxifraga umbrosa, so well known as London pride, are also reckoned among its natives; the arenaria ciliata has been found on Ben Bulbew, and the rosa Hibernica in the vicinity of Belfast. The arbutus unedo, or snowberry tree, contributes much to the beauty of Killarney, where the elegant pinguicula grandiflora is also found, and to be met with nowhere else. ED.

country, both in arts and agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were heard of with us. The manners of the wild natives, their superstitions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful reflections. He should also take with him an able draughtsman: for he must, by no means, pass over the noble castles and seats, the extensive and picturesque lakes and waterfalls, and the lofty, stupendous mountains, so little known, and so engaging to the imagination, when described and exhibited in a lively manner. Such a work would be well received.

As I have seen no modern map of Scotland, I cannot pretend to say how accurate or particular any such may be: but this I know, that the best old maps of that kingdom are very defective.

The great obvious defect that I have remarked in all maps of Scotland that have fallen in my way is, a want of a coloured line, or stroke, that shall exactly define the just limits of that district called the Highlands.* Moreover, all the great avenues

* The Highlands of Scotland are separated from that portion of North Britain termed the Lowlands, by a lofty range of granitic mountains, called the Grampians, which is the only line of demarkation between these distinct divisions of the kingdom. The physical structure of this chain is as remarkable as the general direction is striking, regular, and continuous, forming a grand natural boundary of sublime and romantic peaks, commencing north of the river Don, in the county of Aberdeen, and intersecting the kingdom in a diagonal direction, till it terminates in the south-west, beyond Ardmore, in the county of Dunbarton. This barrier presents a bold, rocky, and precipitous aspect. Many places of the south front consist of a species of breccia. In the centre, and following the range, is a bed of limestone, of vast extent, which contains many strata of slate, and a marble which takes a fine polish, the prevailing colours of which are blue, green, and brown, intermixed with streaks of pure white. A very valuable quarry of green marble has been recently wrought in Glentilt. In the districts of Fortingall, Strathfillan, and Glenlyon, quantities of lead and silver ore have been found. whole of this great range of mountains are numerous detached masses of red and blue granite, containing garnets, amethysts, aqua-marines, rock-crystals, and pebbles of great beauty and variety.

Over the

In this fine chain, there are many summits of considerable altitude, as Benlomond, Schiehallion, and Benlawers. From these, the views are extensive, wild, and magnificent:

There the boundless eye might sail,

O'er a sea of mountains borne.

Here you have a wide fertile valley, and there the rugged and precipitous fastness of some sublime cliffs, on whose tops the golden eagle holds undisputed sway, with nought to disturb the repose of the solitude but the notes of the ptarmigan; while the white hare may be noticed stealing slowly along the bottom of the cliff, ED.