OF SELBORNE 87 



flying, "flumina summa lib ant" In this method of drink- 

 ing perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 



Of the sedge-bird * be pleased to say it sings most part 

 of the night ; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, 

 and imitative of several birds ; as the sparrow, swallow, 

 sky-lark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by 

 throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you 

 immediately set it a-singing ; or in other words, though 

 it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it 

 reassumes its song. 



LETTER XL 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, 



BEFORE your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had 

 been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and 

 female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; 

 so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with 

 their pulli : and besides, as they were then always in pairs, 

 and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no 

 room for mistaking the sexes, nor the individuals of 

 different chimneys the one for the other. From all my 

 observations, it constantly appeared that each sex has the 

 long feathers in its tail that give it that forked shape ; with 

 this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male 

 than in that of the female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and 

 are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also 

 a snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges 

 as they walk : these last sounds seem intended for menace 

 and defiance. 



The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of 

 summer. 



1 British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 1 6. 



