104 SCOTLAND, 



LETTER XXVIII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Dec. 8, 1769. 

 DEAR SIR, 



I WAS much, gratified by your communicative 

 letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent, 

 I find, some considerable time, and gave yourself 

 good room to examine the natural curiosities of that 

 extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well 

 as those of the Highlands. The usual bane of such 

 expeditions is hurry ; because men seldom allot them- 

 selves half the time they should do ; but, fixing on a 

 day for their return, post from place to place, rather 

 as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, 

 than as philosophers investigating the works of na- 

 ture. You must have made, no doubt, many disco- 

 veries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a 

 future edition of the British Zoology, and will have 

 no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much 

 pains on a part of Great Britain that perhaps was 

 never so well examined before. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me, that 

 fieldfares, which are so congenerous to thrushes and 

 blackbirds, should never choose to breed in England : 

 but that they should not think even the Highlands 

 cold, and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a cir- 

 cumstance still more strange and wonderful . The 

 ringousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year 

 round ; so that we have reason to conclude that those 

 migrators that visit us for a short space every autumn, 

 do not come from thence. 



And here, I think, will be the proper place to men- 

 tion, that those birds were most punctual again in 



