li)0 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER I. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DA1NES HARRINGTON 1 . 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, June 30, 17G9. 



WHEN I was in town last month I partly engaged that 

 I would some time do myself the honour to write to you 

 on the subject of natural history : and I am the more 

 ready to fulfil my promise, because I see you are a 

 gentleman of great candour, and one that will make 

 allowances ; especially where the writer professes to 

 be an outdoor naturalist, one that takes his observa- 

 tions from the subject itself, and not from the writings 

 of others. 



The following is a list of summer birds of passage 

 which I have discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged 

 somewhat in the order in which they appear : 



RAII NOMINA. USUALLY APPEARS ABOUT 



1. Wry neck, JJynx sine torquil-) The middle of March: harsh 



(la: S ""''' 



2. Smallest willow > Regulus non ci'ista- ) March 23: chirps till Septem- 



wren, tus: > her. 



3. Swallow, Hirundodomestica: April 13. 



4. Martin, Hirundo agrestis : Ditto. 



5. Sand martin, Hirundo riparia : Ditto. 



6. Blackcap, Atricapilla : Ditto : a sweet wild note. 



1 Daines Barrington, honourable by birth and respected for his talents, 

 was well suited by the pursuits to which from choice he had devoted 

 himself, to become the favourite correspondent of an observer like Gilbert 

 White. The legal studies which he had originally cultivated as a pro- 

 fessional duty, and in which he had been so successful as to have merited 

 the office of recorder of Bristol, and to have become subsequently a Welsh 



