106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
but in July and August they bring their broods into gardens and 
orchards, and make great havoc among the summer-fruits. 
The black-cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and wild 
pipe ; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are 
desultory; but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song 
in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, and 
expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior 
perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted. 
Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they 
warble their throats are wonderfully distended. 
The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that 
of the white-throat ; some birds have a few more notes than others. 
Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock 
sings from morning to night: he affects neighbourhoods, and 
avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houses ; 
with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole. 
The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute and the 
most familiar ; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, 
or a sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a 
wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post 
of a door where people are going in and out all day long. This 
bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a little 
inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from cats 
or other annoyances ; it breeds but once, and retires early. 
Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than 
half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden ; the former has 
produced more than one hundred and twenty species, the latter 
only two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add also that it has 
shown near half the species that were ever known in Great 
Britain.* 
On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a 
quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious; but when I 
recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will 
pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the information it may 
happen to contain. 
* Sweden 221, Great Britain 252 species.t 
1 In the British islands generally, between 320 and 350 are now known, and occasicnal 
additions are continuing to be made. Thus Mr. Yarrel has within the last month noticed 
the dusky petrel as occurring within the limits of the British seas. Mr. William 
Thompson in 1849 gave 262 species to Ireland. 
