OF SELBORNE in 



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 moderate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what 

 should be the reason. The thriving at those times 

 appears to me to arise altogether from the gentle check 

 which the cold throws upon insensible perspiration. The 

 case is just the same with blackbirds, etc.; and farmers and 

 warreners observe, the first, that their hogs fat more kindly 

 at such times, and the latter that their rabbits are never in 

 such good case as in a gentle frost. But when frosts are 

 severe, and of long continuance, the case is soon altered ; 

 for then a want of food soon overbalances the repletion 

 occasioned by a checked perspiration. I have observed, 

 moreover, that some human constitutions are more inclined 

 to plumpness in winter than in summer. 



When birds come to suffer by severe frost, I find that 

 the first that fail and die are the redwing-fieldfares, and 

 then the song-thrushes. 



You wonder, with good reason, that the hedge-sparrows, 

 etc. can be induced to sit at all on the egg of the cuckoo 

 without being scandalized at the vast disproportioned size 

 of the suppositious egg ; but the brute creation, I suppose, 

 have very little idea of size, colour, or number. For the 

 common hen, I know, when the fury of incubation is on 

 her, will sit on a single shapeless stone instead of a nest full 

 of eggs that have been withdrawn : and, moreover, a hen- 

 turkey, in the same circumstances, would sit on in the 

 empty nest till she perished with hunger. 



I think the matter might easily be determined whether 

 a cuckoo lays one or two eggs, or more, in a season, 



