106 WHITE 



season, or does she drop several in different nests according 

 as opportunity offers ? 2 



NOTES I am, etc. 



1 Job xxxix. 16, 17. G. W. 



2 I have found so many cuckoos' eggs in a district where there were but 

 a limited number of cuckoos, that I am satisfied it lays several eggs. The 

 egg of the cuckoo is small for the size of the bird, yet it often looks a monster 

 in some of the nests in which it is deposited, such as sedge-warblers and 

 reed- wrens. Three times at least it has been found in a grasshopper- war- 

 bler's, where the foot or the beak must have been the agent in transferring 

 the egg after being laid into the nest. One July at Wroxham Broad in 

 Norfolk, there were thirty or forty cuckoos flying restlessly about from tree 

 to tree, and uttering frequently a treble cry ; thus : cuck-cuckoo cuck- 

 cuckoo. A week later they were all gone. G. C. D. 



LETTER V 



SELBORNE, April 12^, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, I heard many birds of several species sing 

 last year after midsummer; enough to prove that the summer 

 solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the 

 woods. The yellow-hammer no doubt persists with more 

 steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, the wren, the 

 redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, the goldfinch, the 

 common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of 

 what I advanced. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of the 

 summer migrations, the blackcap will be here in two or three 

 days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one of those 

 songsters ; but I am no birdcatcher ; and so little used to birds 

 in a cage, that I fear if I had one it would soon die for want 

 of skill in feeding. 



Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept in a cage, the thick- 

 billed reed-sparrow of the " Zoology," p. 320 ; or was it the 

 less reed-sparrow of Ray, the sedge-bird of Mr. Pennant's last 

 publication, p. 16? 



As to the matter of long-billed birds growing fatter in mod- 

 erate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what should be the 



