OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 311 



La^t winter, when the ground was covered with snow, I dis- 

 covered all my guinea fowls, in the middle of the day, sitting 

 on the highest boughs of some very tall elms, chattering and 

 making a great clamour : I ordered them to be driven down, 

 lest they should be frozen to death in so elevated a situation; 

 but this was not effected without much difficulty, they being 

 very unwilling to quit their lofty abode, notwithstanding 

 one of them had its feet so much frozen, that we were obliged 

 to kill it. I know not how to account for this, unless it 

 was occasioned by their aversion to the snow on the 

 ground, they being birds that came originally from a liot 

 climate.* 



Notwithstanding the awkward, splay, web-feet, as Mr. 

 White calls them, of the duck genus, some of the foreign 

 species have the power of settling on the boughs of trees, 

 apparently with great ease ; an instance of which T have seen 

 in the Earl of Ashburnham's menagerie, where the summer 

 duck (anas sponsa^ flew up and settled on the branch of an 

 oak tree in my presence ; but whether any of them roost on 

 trees in the night, we are not informed by any author that 

 I am acquainted with. I suppose not ; but that, like the 

 rest of the genus, they sleep on the water, where the birds 

 of this genus are not always perfectly secure, as will appear 

 from the following circumstances, which happened in this 

 neighbourhood a few years since, as I was credibly informed. 

 A female fox was found in the morning drowned in the same 

 pond in which were several geese, and it was supposed, that 

 in the night, the fox swam into the pond to devour the geese, 

 but was attacked by the gander, which being the most 

 powerful in its own element, buffeted the fox with its wings 

 about the head till it was drowned. Markwick. 



Hen Partridge. — A hen partridge came out of a ditch, 



the year than the common fowl or even the pheasant, which latter, however, 

 roost8 in trees, but generally either in warm fir-trees, or in sheltered situation? 

 in woods. — Ed. 



* It is a beautiful arrangement of Providence that guinea-fowls, which arc 

 African birds, and deposit their eggs on the ground, should have the sliells so 

 hard that the common snakes of the country cannot break them. They may, 

 indeed, remove some of them from the nest, but in order to make up for this 

 deficiency, the guinea-fowl lays more eggs tlian any other bird. — Ed. 



