398 The Natural History of Selborne 



When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare 

 deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the 

 young wasps in their maggot state with the highest 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 apivorus 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 surmount : 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 temperature 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 



