424 ON VARIOUS PARTS 



vour tlie young wasps in their maggot state with the highest 

 glee and delight. Any insect-eating bird would do the same ; 

 and therefore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. 

 Ray should call one species of buzzard buteo apivorus sive ves- 

 pivorus, or the honey buzzard, because some combs of wasps 

 happened to be found in one of their nests. The combs were 

 conveyed thither doubtless for the sake of the maggots or 

 nymphs, and not for their honey : since none is to be found 

 in the combs of wasps. Birds of prey occasionally feed on 

 insects ; thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female 

 ants full of eggs with much satisfaction. WHITE. 



That red-starts, fly-catchers, black-caps, and other slender- 

 billed insectivorous small birds, particularly the swallow tribe, 

 make their first appearance very early in the spring, is a well 

 known fact ; though the fly-catcher is the latest of them all 

 in its visit (as this accurate naturalist observes in another 

 place,) for it is never seen before the month of May. If these 

 delicate creatures come to us from a distant country, they 

 will probably be exposed in their passage, as Mr. White 

 justly remarks, to much greater difficulties from storms and 

 tempests than their feeble powers appear to be able to sur- 

 mount : on the other hand, if we suppose them to pass the 

 winter in a dormant state in this country concealed in caverns 

 or other hiding places sufficiently guarded from the extreme 

 cold of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the apr- 

 proach of spring they revive from their torpid state and reas- 

 sume their usual powers of action, it will entirely remove the 

 first difficulty, arising from the storms and tempests they are 

 liable to meet with in their passage ; but how are we to get 

 over the still greater difficulty of their revivication from their 

 torpid state? What degree of warmth in the temperature 

 of the air is necessary to produce that effect, and how it oper- 

 ates on the functions of animal life, are questions not easily 

 answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named this species 

 the honey buzzard because it fed on honey, when. he not only 

 named it in Latin buteo apivorus et respivorus, but expressly 



