144 MIGRATION. 



was a sportsman, that there were times in which 

 woodcocks were so sluggish and sleepy, that they 

 would drop again when flushed just before the spa- 

 niels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun that had been 

 fired at them : whether this strange laziness was the 

 effect of a recent fatiguing journey, I shall not pre- 

 sume to say. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumber- 

 land and Scotland, but also, as I have been always 

 told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In those two last 

 counties, we cannot attribute the failure of them to 

 the want of warmth : the defect in the west is rather 

 a presumptive argument that these birds come over 

 to us from the continent at the narrowest passage, 

 and do not stroll so far westward. 



Let me hear from your own observation whether 

 skylarks do not dust. I think they do ; and if they 

 do, whether they wash also. 



The alauda pratensis of Ray was the poor dupe 

 that was educating the booby of a cuckoo mentioned 

 in my letter of October last.* 



Your letter came too late for me to procure a 

 ringousel for Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal 

 visit ; but I will endeavour to get him one when 

 they call on us again in April. I am glad that you 

 and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I 

 hope they answered your expectation. Royston, or 

 grey crows, are winter birds that come much about 

 the same time with the woodcock : they, like the 

 fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason for 

 migration ; for, as they fare in the winter like their 

 congeners, so might they, in all appearance, in the 

 summer. f Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken? 



* Letter XXXVIII. to the Hon. Daines Barrington. 



f The Royston crow breeds, and is stationary, on all the west 

 coast of Scotland ; and it is probable that most of those which 

 visit England during winter, arrive from Sweden and Norway, 



