264 HONEY-BUZZARDS. 



reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour, which he 

 cannot lay aside ; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his 

 own shell, must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and 

 disposition for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year 

 (usually the beginning of June) when his exertions are re- 

 markable. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five 

 in^the morning ; and, traversing the garden, examines every 

 wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will 

 escape if possi ble ; and often has eluded the care of the gar- 

 dener, and wandered to some distant field. The motives that 

 impel him to undertake these rambles seem to be of the 

 amorous kind. Hi^ fancy then becomes intent on sexual 

 attachments, which transport him beyond his usual gravity, 

 and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn 

 deportment. 



LETTEE XCIII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



A PAIR of honey-buzzards, huteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, 

 Baii, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs, and 

 lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near 

 the middle of Selborne Hanger, in the summer of 1780. In 

 the middle of the month of June, a bold boy chmbed this 

 tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and 

 brought down an e^g, the only one in the nest, which had 

 been set on for some time, and contained the embryo of a 

 young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round, as those 

 of the common buzzard ; was dotted at each end with small red 

 spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad bloody zone. 

 The hen bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Ray's 

 description of that species ; had a black cere, short thick legs, 

 and a long tail. "When on the wing, this species may be 



by inclining them to the horizon ;" in which the author has shown, by cal- 

 culation, that a much greater number of the rays of the sun will fall on sucb 

 walls than on those which are perpendiculai 



