MIGBATIOff. 137 



Trotten, in the county of Sussex, they killed a duck in that 

 dreadful winter, 1708-9, with a silver collar about its neck,* 

 on which were engraven the arms of the King of Denmark. 

 This anecdote the rector of Trotten at that time has often 

 told to a near relation of mine, and to the best of my 

 remembrance, the collar was in the possession of the 

 rector. 



At present, I do not know any body near the sea-side 

 that will take the trouble to remark at what time of the 

 moon woodcocks first come : if I lived near the sea myself, 

 I would soon tell you more of the matter. One thing 

 I used to observe when I 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 spaniels, 

 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 presume to say. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and 

 Scotland, but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire 

 and CornwalLf In those two last counties, we cannot attri- 

 bute 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 



* I have read a like anecdote of a swan. 



f* In a western direction the nightingale visits Dorsetshire and the eastern 

 part only of Devonshire ; is never heard in Cornwall ; visits Somersetshire, 

 and goes northward on the western side of England as high as Carlisle. On 

 the eastern side it is never heard beyond the city of York, yet visits much 

 higher latitudes on the European continent. Linnaeus includes it in his 

 Fauna Succica. Great pains were taken by (I think) Sir John Sinclair to 

 establish the nightingale in Scotland, but without success. An old notion 

 referred to by Montagu, that the nightingale possibly might not be found in 

 any part but where cowslips grow plentifully, seems incorrect : cowslips grow 

 in great luxuriance in Glamorganshire, and also north of Carlisle. A gentle- 

 man of Gower, which is the peninsula beyond Swansea, procured from Norfolk 

 and Surrey, a few years back, some scores of young nightingales, hoping that 

 an acquaintance with his beautiful woods and their mild climate would induce 

 a second visit ; but the law of Nature was too strong for him, and not a 

 single bird returned. Dyer, in his Grongar Hill, makes the nightingale the 

 companion of his muse in the vale of Tovvey or Carmarthen, but this is a 

 poetical licence, as this bird is not heard there. W. Y. 



