218 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER VI. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, May 21, 1770. 



THE severity and turbulence of last month so inter- 

 rupted the regular process of summer migration, that 

 some of the birds do but just begin to show themselves, 

 and others are apparently thinner than usual ; as the 

 whitethroat, the blackcap, the redstart, the flycatcher. 

 I well remember that after the very severe spring in 

 the year 1739-40, summer birds of passage were very 

 scarce. They come probably hither with a south-east 

 wind, or when it blows between those points; but in 

 that unfavourable year the winds blowed the whole 

 spring and summer through from the opposite quarters. 

 And yet amidst all these disadvantages two swallows, 

 as I mentioned in my last, appeared this year as early 

 as the llth of April, amidst frost and snow ; but they 

 withdrew again for a time. 



I am not pleased to find that some people seem so 

 little satisfied with Scopoli's new publication 1 ; there 

 is room to expect great things from the hands of that 

 man, who is a good naturalist : and one would think 

 that a history of the birds of so distant and southern a 

 region as Carniola would be new and interesting. I 

 could wish to see that work, and hope to get it sent 

 down 2 . Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches that 

 work in the quicksilver mines of that district. 



When you talked of keeping a reed sparrow, and 

 giving it seeds, I could not help wondering: because 



1 This work he calls his Annus Primus Historico Naturalis. 



2 Later in the same year the author procured the work here spoken of. 

 His observations on it will be found in his Letters to Pennant, numbered 

 XXXI. and XXXII., as well as incidentally in others. See also the 

 following Letter. E. T. B. 



