102 SCOTLAND. 



LETTEE XXV11I. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Dec. 8, 1769. 



DEAE 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 themselves 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 nature. 

 You must have made, no doubt, many discoveries, 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 seques- 

 tered enough, is a circumstance still more strange and 

 wonderful. The ring-ousel, 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 mention, 

 that those birds were most punctual again in their migration 

 this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th of Sep- 

 tember ; but their flocks were larger than common, and 

 their stay protracted somewhat beyond the usual time. If 

 they came to spend the whole winter with us, as some of 

 their congeners do, and then left us, as they do, in spring, I 

 should not be so much struck with the occurrence, since it 



