OF SELBORNE. 121 



such a wild sweetness that it always brings to my mind those 

 lines in a song in " As You Like It" 



11 And tune his merry note 



" Unto the wild bird's throat." SHAKESPEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the 

 song of several other birds ; but then it also has an hurrying 

 manner, not at all to it's advantage : it is notwithstanding a 

 delicate polyglot. 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; 

 perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame red- 

 breast in a cage that always sang as long as candles were in 

 the room ; but in their wild state no one supposes they sing in 

 the night. 



I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there are to 

 be seen much fewer birds in July than in any former month, 

 notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily. Sure I 

 am that it is far otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, 

 which increases prodigiously as the summer advances : and I 

 saw, at the time mentioned, many hundreds of young 

 wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost co- 

 vered the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in 

 the other species, may it not be owing to the dams being 

 engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by the 

 leaves ? 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs 

 of woodcocks and snipes; but nothing ever occurred that 

 helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be : all 

 that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay 

 many pellucid small gravels, 



I am, &c. 



