(>6 NATURAL HISTORY 



trooping in such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss 

 even what to suspect about them. I watched them 

 narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about 

 Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer. Subsist 

 they cannot openly among us, and yet elude the eyes of 

 the inquisitive : and, as to their hiding, no man pretends 

 to have found any of them in a torpid state in the 

 winter. But with regard to their migration, what diffi- 

 culties attend that supposition ! that such feeble bad 

 fliers (who the summer long never flit but from hedge 

 to hedge) should be able to traverse vast seas and con- 

 tinents, in order to enjoy milder seasons amidst the 

 regions of Africa 12 ! 



LETTER XIII. 



TO THE SAME. 

 SIR, SELBORNE, Jan. 22, 17G8. 



As in one of your former letters you expressed the 

 more satisfaction from my correspondence on account 

 of my living in the most southerly county ; so now I 

 may return the compliment, and expect to have my 

 curiosity gratified by your living much more to the 

 north. 



12 There certainly does exist a difficulty in conceiving how some of the 

 birds of passage, such feeble and bad fliers, should be able to migrate to 

 such a vast distance; but some of our wonder will perhaps diminish, 

 when we read an account of the manner in which the quail crosses the 

 Mediterranean, for the coast of Africa. " Towards the end of September, 

 the quails avail themselves of rf northerly wind to take their departure 

 from Europe, and flapping one wing, while they present the other to the 

 gale, half-sail, half-oar, they graze the billows of the Mediterranean with 

 their fattened rumps, and bury themselves in the sands of Africa, that 

 they may serve as food to the famished inhabitants of Zara." St. Pierre's 

 Studies of Nature, vol. i. p. 91. MITFORD. 



Mr. White subsequently arrived at a solution of this difficulty. See his 

 Letter XXXIII. to Pennant; and that to Daines Harrington numbered 

 IX. W. Y. 



