NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 125 
The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song 
of several other birds ; but then it has also an hurrying manner, 
not at all to its advantage: it is notwithstanding a delicate 
polyglot. 
It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; perhaps 
only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame redbreast in a cage 
that always sang as long as candles were in the room; but in their 
wild state no one supposes they sing in the night. 
I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there are to be 
seen much fewer birds in July than in any former month, notwith- 
standing so many young are hatched daily. Sure I am that it is 
far otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, which increases 
prodigiously as the summer advances: and I saw at the time 
mentioned, many hundreds of young wagtails on the banks of the 
Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If the matter 
appears as you say in the other species, may it not be owing to 
the dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are 
concealed by the leaves ? 
Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stornachs of 
woodcocks and snipes ; but nothing ever occurred that helped to 
explain to me what their subsistence might be: all that I could 
ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid small 
gravels. 
I am, &c. 
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