NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 1 15 



appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria ; 

 but he says, "Avis hcec septentrionalium provinciarum cestivo 

 tempore incola est ; ubi plerumque nidificat. Appropinquante 

 hyeme australiores provincias petit ; hinc circa plenilunium 

 mensis Octobris plerumque Austriam transmigrat. Tune 

 rursus circa plenilunium p otis simum mensis Martii per Aus- 

 triam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales provincias redit" 

 For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see " Elen- 

 chus," etc., p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the 

 migration of woodcocks ; though little is proved concerning 

 the place of breeding. 



P.S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks 

 of this present very wet weather, seven inches and a half of 

 rain, which is more than has fallen in any three weeks for 

 these thirty years past in that part of the world. A mean 

 quantity in that county for one year is twenty inches and a 

 half. 



LETTER IX 



FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. \2th, 1772. 



DEAR SIR, You are, I know, no great friend to migration; 

 and the well-attested accounts from various parts of the king- 

 dom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many 

 of the swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay 

 themselves up like insects and bats in a torpid state, and 

 slumber away the more uncomfortable months till the return 

 of the sun and fine weather awakens them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general ; 

 because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my 

 brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of .the motions 

 of these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks 

 together, both spring and fall ; during which periods myriads 

 of the swallow kind traverse the straits from north to south, 

 and from south to north, according to the season. And these 

 vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, 

 hoopoes, Oro pendoloSj or golden thrushes, etc., etc., and also 

 of many of our soft-billed summer birds of passage ; and more- 



