104 NATURAL HISTORY 



also that it has shown near half the species that were ever 

 known in Great-Britain. 9 



On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with 

 it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious ; but, 

 when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I 

 hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the 

 information it may happen to contain. 



LETTER XLI. 



TO THE SAME. 



IT is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species 

 of soft-billed birds, that continue with us the winter through, 

 subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds 

 seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of 

 our winters ; for the robust wry-neck (so much resembling the 

 hardy race of wood-peckers) migrates, while the feeble little 

 golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest 

 frosts without availing himself o*f houses or villages, to which 

 most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while 

 this keeps aloof in fields and woods ; but perhaps this may be 

 the reason why they may often perish, and why they are 

 almost as rare as any bird we know*. 



I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, 

 which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia 

 state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt 

 shallow streams near their spring-heads, where they never 



friend, the Baroness de Sternberg, wrote to me from her residence on the 

 Lake of Windermere, " The little flycatchers have built for the last five 

 years in the same corner of the greenhouse j and now one of her family 

 has come to build too, where the mother has been so welcome." A por- 

 tion of bark on the trunk of a sycamore in my own garden stood out as if 

 partially detached. Underneath this scanty penthouse a pair of these 

 birds built every spring for several years, until the tree was taken down. 

 T. B.] 



P Sweden, 221, Great-Britain, 252 species. 



* [This bird migrates in multitudes. See Tamil's Brit. -Birds Prof. 

 Newton's edit. i. p. 451 et seq.T. B.] 



