OF SELBORNE. 215 



LETTER V. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, April 12, 1770. 



I HEARD many birds of several species sing last year 

 after midsummer; enough to prove that -the summer 

 solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music 

 of the woods. The yellowhammer, no doubt, persists 

 with more steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, 

 the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, 

 the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted 

 instances of the truth of what I advanced. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity 

 of the summer migrations, the blackcap will be here in 

 two or three days. I wish it was in my power to pro- 

 cure you one of those songsters; but I am no bird- 

 catcher ; and so little used to birds in a cage, that I 

 fear if I had one it would soon die for want of skill in 

 feeding. 



Was your reed sparrow, which you kept in a cage, 

 the thick-billed reed sparrow of the Zoology, p. 320; or 

 was it the less reed sparrow of Ray, the sedge-bird of 

 Mr. Pennant's last publication, p. 16? 



As to the matter of long-billed birds growing fatter 

 in moderate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what 

 should be the reason. The thriving at those times 

 appears to me to arise altogether from the gentle check 

 which the cold throws upon insensible perspiration. 

 The case is just the same with blackbirds, &c.; and 

 farmers and warreners observe, the first, that their hogs 

 fat more kindly at such times, and the latter that their 

 rabbits are never in such good case as in a gentle frost. 

 But when frosts are severe, and of long continuance, the 

 case is soon altered ; for then a want of food soon over- 

 balances the repletion occasioned by a checked per- 



