MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 141 



duck in that dreadful winter 1708-9, with a silver collar about its 

 neck,* on which were engraven the arms of the king of Den- 

 mark. This anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often 

 told to a near relation of mine ; and, to the best of my remem- 

 brance, the collar was in the possession of the rector. 



At present I do not know any body near the sea- side that 

 will take the trouble to remark at what time of the moon wood- 

 cocks first come : if I lived near the sea myself I would soon 

 tell you more of the matter. One thing I used to observe when 

 I was a sportsman, that there were times in which woodcocks 

 were so sluggish and sleepy that they would drop again when 

 flushed just before the spaniels, nay just at the muzzle of a gun 

 that had been fired at them : whether this strange laziness was the 

 effect of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scot- 

 land, but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Corn- 

 wall. In those last two counties we cannot attribute the failure 

 of them to the want of warmth : the defect in the west is rather 

 a presumptive argument that these birds come over to us from 

 the continent at the narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far 

 westward.f 



Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do 

 not dust. I think they do : and if they do, whether they wash also. 



The alauda pratensis of Ray was the poor dupe that was educat- 

 ing the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October 

 last. 



Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ousel for 

 Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal visit : but I will endeavour 

 to get him one when they call on us again in April. I am glad 

 that you and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope 

 they answered your expectation. Royston, or gray crows, are 

 winter birds that come much about the same time with the wood- 

 cock : they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent 

 reason for migration ; for as they fare in the winter like their 



* 1 have read a like anecdote of a swan. 



t The nightingale, 1 think, appears to migrate almost due north and south, deviating but a 

 very little indeed either to the right or left. There are none in Brittany, nor in the channel 

 islands (Jersey, Guernsey, &c.) ; and the most westward of them probably cross the channel at 

 Cape la Hogue, arriving on the coast of Dorsetshire, and thence apparently proceeding north- 

 ward, rather than dispersing towards the west, so that they are only known as accidental strag- 

 glers beyond at most the third degree of western longitude, a line which cuts off the counties of 

 Devonshire and Cornwall, together with all Wales and Ireland, and by far the greater portion of 

 Scotland, in which last mentioned kingdom the species has once or twice occurred to the east 

 ward only of this meridian. ED. 



