OF SELBORNE. 233 



Let me hear from your own observation whether sky- 

 larks do not dust. I think they do : and if they do, 

 whether they wash also. 



The titlark, or Alauda pratensis of Ray, was the poor 

 dupe that was educating the booby of a cuckoo men- 

 tioned in my letter of October last. 



Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring- 

 ousel for Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal visit ; but 

 I will endeavour to get him one when they call on us 

 again in April. I am glad that you and that gentle- 

 man saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope they answered 

 your expectation. Royston, or gray crows, are winter 

 birds, that come much about the same time with the 

 woodcock: they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have 

 no apparent reason for migration: for as they fare in 

 the winter like their congeners, so might they, in all 

 appearance, in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a 

 boy, mistaken ? did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, 

 and take it for the nest of a fieldfare ? 



The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon 4 , ((Enas, RAII), is 



Somersetshire ; and goes northwards on the western side of England as 

 high as Carlisle. On the eastern side it is never heard beyond the city 

 of York, yet visits much higher latitudes on the European continent. 

 Linnasus includes it in his Fauna Suecica. Great pains were taken by 

 (I think) Sir John Sinclair to establish the nightingale in Scotland, but 

 without success. An old notion, referred to by Montagu, that the night- 

 ingale possibly might not be found in any part but where cowslips grow 

 plentifully, seems incorrect: cowslips grow in great luxuriance in Gla- 

 morganshire, and also north of Carlisle. A gentleman of Gower, which 

 is the peninsula beyond Swansea, procured from Norfolk and Surrey, a 

 few years back, some scores of young nightingales, hoping that an 

 acquaintance with his beautiful woods and their mild climate would 

 induce a second visit ; but the law of Nature was too strong for him, and 

 not a single bird returned. Dyer, in his Grongar Hill, makes the night- 

 ingale a companion of his muse in the vale of Towey or Carmarthen, but 

 this is a poetical license, as this bird is not heard there. W. Y. 



4 Here, as in a previous passage, the author has spoken of the wood- 

 pigeon as synonymous with the stock-dove. It is more usual to apply 

 that name to the ring-dove. Perhaps, indeed, with the view of avoiding 

 confusion, it would be better that the use of the name wood-pigeon should 

 be altogether abandoned. E. T. B. 



