124 NATURAL HISTORY 



The chilling night dews fall : away, retire ; 

 For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire u ! 

 Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, 

 The* impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : 

 True to the signal, by love's meteor led, 

 Leander hastened to his Hero's bed ". 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXV. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, Si i HUH M , Aug. 30, 1769. 



IT gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the 

 ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd 

 question when you ask me how I know that their 

 autumnal migration is southward ? Were not candour 

 and openness the very life of natural history, I should 

 pass over this query just as a sly commentator does 

 over a crabbed passage in a classic; but common 

 ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some 

 degree of shame, that I only reasoned in that case from 

 analogy. For as all other autumnal birds migrate from 

 the northward to us, to partake of our milder winters, 

 and return to the northward again when the rigorous 

 cold abates, so I concluded that the ring-ousels did the 

 same, as well as their congeners the fieldfares; and 

 especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt cold 

 mountainous countries: but I have good reason to 

 suspect since, that they may come to us from the west- 

 ward ; because I hear, from very good authority, that 



11 The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk 

 of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the male, 

 which is a slender dusky Scarahccus. 



[I have proved by experiment, that this opinion is incorrect, or at least 

 extremely doubtful. See Insect Miscelkmies, pp. 222 6. RENNIE.] 



12 See the story of Hero and Leander. 



