NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 151 



for about ten minutes while we watched it. Next day I went again with a 

 photographic camera and exposed three plates, the lens being within six feet of 

 the bird, and the front leg of the stand being well within two feet. On trying 

 to get a fourth view still nearer, the bird rose. As I do not suppose a photograph 

 of a sitting woodcock has ever been taken before, I enclose you a print from 

 one of my negatives The nest to-day was empty, with signs of the young 

 birds having been satisfactorily hatched. " 



" R. C. GRAHAM, 



" Skipness, Argyllshire" 



LETTER IX. 



FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. 12th, 1772. 



DEAR SIR, You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; and 

 the well-attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom 

 seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the 

 swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up 

 like insects and bats in a torpid state, and slumber away the more 

 uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather 

 awakens them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general ; 

 because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my 

 brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of 

 these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, 

 both spring and fall ; during which periods myriads of the swallow 

 kind traverse the straits from north to south, and from south to 

 north, according to the season. And these vast migrations consist 

 not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, Oro pendolos, or 

 golden thrushes, etc., etc., and also of many of our soft-billed 

 summer birds of passage ; and moreover of birds which never 

 leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and kites. Old 

 Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the 

 incredible armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring- 

 time traversing the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe. 

 Besides the above mentioned, he remarks that the procession is 

 swelled by whole troops of eagles and vultures. 



Now it is no wonder that birds residing in Africa should retreat 





