t2H NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER V. 



TO THE SAME. 



SKLBDRNE, April, i2//j, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, 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 

 white-throat, 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 procure you one of those songsters ; 

 but I am no birdcatcher, 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 

 overbalances the repletion occasioned by a checked perspiration. 

 I have observed, moreover, that some human constitutions are 

 more inclined to plumpness in winter than in summer. 



* See Letter XXV. 



