io8 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



the most incurious observer that they whistle the year 

 round, hard frost excepted ; especially the latter. 



It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or 

 a less reed-sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is 

 undoubtedly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a 

 summer bird of passage, they would require more nice 

 and curious management in a cage than I should be able to 

 give them : they are both distinguished songsters. The note 

 of the former has such a wild sweetness that it always brings 

 to my mind those lines in a song in " As You Like It," 



" And tune his merry note 

 Unto the wild bird's throat." SHAKESPEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling 

 the song of several other birds ; but then it also has an 

 hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage : it is not- 

 withstanding a delicate polyglot. 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; 

 perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame 

 red-breast in a cage that always sang as long as candles 

 were in the room ; but in their wild state no one supposes 

 they sing in the night. 



I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there 

 are to be seen much fewer birds in July than in any former 

 month, notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily. 

 Sure I am that it is far otherwise with respect to the 

 swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer 

 advances : and I saw, at the time mentioned, many hun- 

 dreds of young wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, 

 which almost covered the meadows. If the matter appears 

 as you say in the other species, may it not be owing to the 

 dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are 

 concealed by the leaves ? 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the 

 stomachs of woodcocks and snipes ; but nothing ever 

 occurred that helped to explain to me what their sub- 

 sistence might be : all that I could ever find was a soft 

 mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. 



I am, etc. 



