NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 75 



LETTER XXVI. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, December %th, 1769. 



DEAR SIR, I was much gratified by your communicative letter 

 on your return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable 

 time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities 

 of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as 

 those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is 

 hurry, because men seldom allot themselves half the time they 

 should do ; but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to 

 place, rather as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, 

 than as philosophers investigating the works of nature. You must 

 have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a good fund 

 of materials for a future edition of the "British Zoology;" and 

 will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains 

 on a part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined 

 before. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, which 

 are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose 

 to breed in England ; but that they should not think even the high- 

 lands cold and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a circumstance 

 still more strange and wonderful. The ring-ousel, you find, stays 

 in Scotland the whole year round ; so that we have reasons to con- 

 clude that those migrators that visit us for a short space every 

 autumn do not come from thence.* 



* How true is the opening to this letter. Even now the north of Scotland is not known 

 zoologically ; it would still require to be explored leisurely, and we have no doubt that 

 there is yet much in what are called the " lower departments " to reward the care of a 

 diligent investigation. 



We are not aware that the ring-ousel "stays in Scotland the whole year round." 

 Mr. Yarnell states, or rather mentions without stating authority, that Scotch instances 

 of the fieldfare breeding have occurred, and that nests have been found in the southern 

 counties. We have never known an authentic instance in Scotland, and we have received 

 many letters upon the subject which invariably turned out that the supposed fieldfare was 

 the missel-thrush. They often remain very late, until the middle of May, according to 

 the season, and may sometimes be seen after some of the summer visitants have arrived. 

 We should not consider it at all remarkable that the breeding of some solitary pairs should 

 be authentically recorded. In the northern countries where it breeds, it is naturally a 

 late incubator. The " snow-fleck " (plectrophanes nivalis] is not a short-winged bird, and 

 the first quill is the longest, which is the formation generally seen in birds of powerful or 

 lengthened flight. This bird may occasionally remain and breed in Scotland. Professor 



