Retrospective Criticism. Ill 



useful and interesting. I am merely urging that articles like the above are 

 not even bordering upon rarities. The introduction of such a list into your 

 Magazine, as that at p. .392., proposed as a dainty bill of fare to the natu- 

 ralist, reminds me of an anecdote of Johnson, who, being invited to a 

 dinner, afterwards grumbled at the fare, when some one (perhaps his friend 

 Boswell) taking him up, said, " Now, Doctor, after all, was it not a very 

 good dinner ?" " Why yes. Sir," replied Johnson ; " but it was not a 

 dinner to ask a man to.'^ — JB. Coventry^ Nov. 9. 1828. 



Jemiings's Ornithology. — There are a few points to which I desire to 

 reply in the notice of my Ornithologia, in the Magazine of Natural History. 

 (Vol.1, p. 541.) 



First, I wish to observe, that " the chief of my knowledge of the natural 

 history of birds has been obtained by a long residence in Somersetshire, at 

 Huntspile, of which place I am a native;" that the observations which I 

 have made on the song thrush (Turdus musicus), are particularly ap- 

 plicable to facts with which I have there become acquainted. I have 

 stated also, that " we must not be in haste to condemn what we have not 

 ourselves witnessed:" throughout my work I have, I hope, been con- 

 stantly impressed with this sentiment. Now, although I am not prepared 

 to deny that, sometimes, and in some places, the nest of the song thrush 

 might be plastered within with cow-dung^ yet I do strongly suspect that no 

 clay enters, even as a cement, into the composition of the plaster, and I 

 am led to this conclusion chiefly by the lightness of the nest. The black- 

 bird's nest (Turdus ikf erula) is, I am well aware, plastered with clay^ over 

 which is laid dry grass or some such material ; and it is, in consequence of 

 having clay in its composition, much heavier than the thrush's nest. That 

 I have never seen a nest of the thrush in Somersetshire, lined with cow- 

 dung, I think, I may confidently assert. The lining of the thrush's nest, 

 there at least, I have always found of a very light buff colour ; and that it 

 consists chiefly of rotten ivood I am equally well assured, as pieces of 

 this material, and those sometimes tolerably large, are frequently apparent 

 in it. 



As to the singing of the thrush while sitting on the eggs, I admit that it 

 might, possibly, be a solitary fact, although I think otherwise ; but it is one 

 of which, however, I can entertain no doubt, as it was heard not only by 

 myself, but by other branches of my family, the sweetness of the song 

 having excited our particular attention ; and what makes the fact still 

 more memorable is, that the nest was a short distance from my father's 

 house, and we afterwards took the young, one of which we raised and kept 

 for some years in a cage, where it sang delightfully. In regard to the 

 cuckoo's not being a climbing bird, which your Reviewer in a note decidedly 

 affirms (an aflirmation without any evidence, to which one scarcely knows 

 how to reply), I can only say that, as few, if any, persons have seen that 

 singular bird climbing trees for its food, we can only reason from the few 

 facts which we possess concerning it. It is, we know, furnished with 

 scansorial feet, and I have never seen it collect its food on the ground ; 

 indeed, except in its flight, have rarely seen it any where else but on treeSj 

 not often, if ever on bushes or near the ground. The cuckoo kept in a 

 cage, as mentioned in Ornitholdgia, page 142, did occasionally pick up its 

 food, but this it always did while it was on the perch ; if an earthworm 

 happened to fall from its beak, it never descended to the bottom of the 

 cage to pick it up. I think it therefore quite fair to conclude, that it does 

 climb about the trees which it frequents, and possibly obtains its food from 

 them. Mr. Yarrell, than whom, perhaps, a more accurate and intelligent 

 observer never existed, has disseq^ed many cuckoos, and he says, that 

 the stomach is similar in its structure to the woodpecker's, and therefore 

 fitted for the digestion of animal food only; that the contents of the 

 stomach invariably indicate the presence of such food, namely, the larvce of 



