MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 139 



nium potissimum mensis Martii per Austrian, matrimonio juncta 

 ad septentrionales provincias redit." For the whole passage 

 (which I have abridged) see Elenchus, &c. p. 351. This seems 

 to be a full proof of the migration of woodcocks ; though little 

 is proved concerning the place of breeding. 



P. S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks of 

 this present very wet weather, seven inches and a half of rain, 

 which is more than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty 

 years past in that part of the world. A mean quantity in that 

 county for one year is twenty inches and a half. 



LETTER IX. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 

 DEAR SIR, Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771. 



You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; and the well 

 attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to 

 justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow 

 kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like 

 insects and bats, in a torpid state, and slumber away the more 

 uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather 

 awakens them.* 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general : 

 because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my 

 brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of 

 these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks toge- 

 ther, both spring and fall : during which periods myriads of the 

 swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, and from 

 south to north, according to the season. And these vast migra- 

 tions consist not only of hirundines, but of bee-birds, f hoopoes, 

 oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c. and also of many of 

 our soft-billed summer-birds of passage ; and moreover of birds 

 which never leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and 

 kites. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious ac- 

 count of the incredible armies of hawks and kites which he saw 

 in the spring-time traversing the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia 

 to Europe. Besides the above mentioned, he remarks that the 

 procession is swelled by whole troops of eagles and vultures. 



* See note to page . ED. 



t The bee-eater (merops vulgaris) a most beautiful bird, but extremely rare visitant to the 

 British islands, is here intended. Two or three of our summer birds are confused in some parts 

 of the country under the name of "bee-bird." ED. 



