72 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XXXIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Nov. 26, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



I WAS much pleased to see, among the collection of birds from 

 Gibraltar, some of those short-winged English summer-birds of 

 passage, concerning whose departure we have made so much 

 inquiry. Now if these birds are found in Andalusia to migrate 

 to and from Barbary, it may easily be supposed that those that 

 come to us may migrate back to the continent, and spend their 

 winters in some of the warmer parts of Europe. This is certain, 

 that many soft-billed birds that come to Gibraltar appear there 

 only in spring and autumn, seeming to advance in pairs towards 

 the northward, for the sake of breeding during the summer 

 months ; and retiring in parties and broods toward the south 

 at the decline of the year : so that the rock of Gibraltar is the 

 great rendezvous, and place of observation, from whence they 

 take their departure each way towards Europe or Africa. 1 It is 

 therefore no mean discovery, I think, to find that our small 

 short-winged summer birds of passage are to be seen spring 

 and autumn on the very skirts of Europe ; it is a presumptive 

 proof of their emigrations. 



Scopoli seems to me to have found the hirundo melba, the 

 great Gibraltar swift, in Tirol, without knowing it. 2 For what 

 is his hirundo alpina but the afore-mentioned bird in other words ? 

 Says he " Omnia prioris " (meaning the swift) (< sed pectus album ; 

 paulo major priore ". I do not suppose this to be a new species. 

 It is true also of the melba, that "nidi/teat in excelsis Alpium 

 rupibus ". Vid. Annum Primum. 



My Sussex friend, a man of observation and good sense, but 

 no naturalist, to whom I applied on account of the stone-curlew, 

 oedicnemus, sends me the following account : " In looking over 

 "my Naturalist's Journal for the month of April, I find the 

 "stone-curlews are first mentioned on the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth, which date seems to me rather late. They live with 



1 [Col. Irby's Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar has recently made us 

 fully acquainted with migration at this point.] 



* [The alpine swift (Cypselus melba, L. ) was no doubt the bird described by 

 Scopoli, with white breast (pectus album), and also that found by John White at 

 Gibraltar. See Irby, of. cit. t p. 214.] 



