264 HOKEY-BUZZAKDS. 



reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour, which he 

 cannot lay aside ; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his 

 own shell, must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and 

 disposition for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year 

 (usually the beginning of June) when his exertions are re- 

 markable. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five 

 in x the morning ; and, traversing the garden, examines every 

 wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will 

 escape if possible ; and often has eluded the care of the gar- 

 dener, and wandered to some distant field. The motives that 

 impel him to undertake these rambles seem to be of the 

 amorous kind. His fancy then becomes intent on sexual 

 attachments, which transport him beyond his usual gravity, 

 and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn 

 deportment. 



LETTER XCIII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



A PAIR of honey-buzzards, luteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, 

 E-aii, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs, and 

 lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near 

 the middle of Selborne Hanger, in the summer of 1780. In 

 the middle of the month of June, a bold boy climbed this 

 tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and 

 brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had 

 been set on for some time, and contained the embryo of a 

 young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round, as those 

 of the common buzzard ; was dotted at each end with small red 

 spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad bloody zone. 

 The hen bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Bay's 

 description of that species ; had a black cere, short thick legs, 

 and a long tail. When on the wing, this species may be 



by inclining them to the horizon ;" in which the author has shown, by cal- 

 culation, that a much greater number of the rays of the sun will fall on such 

 walla than on those which are perpendiculai . 



