220 NATURAL HISTORY 



usually characteristic of the male sex : but this sexual 

 diversity does not take place in earlier life; for a 

 beautiful youth shall be so like a beautiful girl that 

 the difference shall not be discernible ; 



" Quern si puellarum insereres choro, 

 Mire sagaces falleret hospites 

 Discrimen obscurum, solutis 

 Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu." Hon. 



LETTER VII. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, RINGMER, near LEWES, Oct. 8, 1770. 



I AM glad to hear that Kuckahn l is to furnish you with 

 the birds of Jamaica; a sight of the Hirundines of that 

 hot and distant island would be a great entertainment 

 to me. 



The Anni of Scopoli are now in my possession ; and 

 I have read the Annus Primus with satisfaction : for 

 though some parts of this work are exceptionable, and 

 he may advance some mistaken observations ; yet the 

 ornithology of so distant a country as Carniola is very 

 curious. Men that undertake only one district are 

 much more likely to advance natural knowledge than 

 those that grasp at more than they can possibly be 



1 Kuckahn is only known to me by a paper, published in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions for 1770, on the preservation of dead birds. It 

 discusses with judgment the various modes that had been adopted by 

 others, most of which the writer states that he has himself tried ; and 

 then describes minutely the proceeding which he regards as the most 

 advantageous. He also speaks of the care to be bestowed on the keep- 

 ing of a collection, after it is formed. His allusions to the attention that 

 should be paid to attitude are almost poetical; and the fervour with 

 which he insists on the necessity of making each part of the action cor- 

 respond with all the other evidences of it in the position of the bird, even 

 to the ruffling of its feathers when excited, is quite in accordance with 

 thorough devotion to the Horatian maxim " Qualis ab incepto proces- 

 Berit servetur ad iiuum. ' E. T. B. 



