NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XXXII. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SEIJJORNE, Oct. 29, 1770. 



AFTER an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Brisson, &c. 

 I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's Hirundo 

 hyberna in Scopoli's new discovered Hirundo rupestris, 

 p. 167. His description of" Supra murina, subtus albida ; 

 rectrices macula ovali alba in latere interno ; pedes nudi, 

 nigri ; rostrum nigrum ; remiges obscuriores quam plumcc 

 dor sales ; rectrices remigibus concolores ; cauda emarginata 

 nee forcipata ;" agrees very well with the bird in ques- 

 tion ; but when he comes to advance that it is " statura 

 Hirundinis urbicce" and that " definitio Hirundinis riparice 

 Linncei huic quoque convenit" he in some measure invali- 

 dates all he has said ; at least he shows at once that 

 he compares them to these species merely from memory : 

 for I have compared the birds themselves, and lind they 

 differ widely in every circumstance of shape, size, and 

 colour. However, as you will have a specimen, I 

 shall be glad to hear what your judgment is in the 

 matter 1 . 



Whether my brother is forestalled in his nondescript 

 or not, he will have the credit of first discovering that 



1 It seems highly probable that Gilbert White's suspicion of the iden- 

 tity of his brother's Gibraltar swallow with the Hirundo rupestris was 

 correct : indeed, if the Gibraltar bird exhibited a white spot on the inner 

 barb of each of the tail feathers (except the two intermediate ones), it 

 could have been no other than the bird first characterized by Scopoli, in 

 his Annus Primus, under the name quoted. According to M. Temminck 

 the rock swallow is abundant along the shores of the Mediterranean ; 

 common in Savoy and in Piedmont ; less numerous in Switzerland ; rare 

 in Germany ; and a bird of passage in some of the southern departments 

 of France. He states that individuals from Africa and from South 

 America [!] scarcely differ from each other. E. T. B. 



