4i 6 'The Natural History of Selborne 



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 apivorns sive 

 vespivorus, 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 

 approach of spring they revive from their torpid state and 

 reassume 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 revivification from 

 their torpid state ? What degree of warmth in the tempera- 

 ture of the air is necessary to produce that effect, and how 

 it operates 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 vespivorus, but ex- 



