82 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



from Alresford, where there is a great lake : it was kept awhile, 

 but died. 



I saw young teals l taken alive in the ponds of W olmer-forest 

 in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild 

 ducks. 



Speaking of the swift, 2 that page says " it's drink the dew " ; 

 whereas it should be " it drinks on the wing " ; for all the swallow 

 kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers : 

 like Firgil's bees, they drink flying, "flumina summa libant ". 3 In 

 this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 



Of the sedge-bird 4 be pleased to say it sings most part of the 

 night ; it's notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative 

 of several birds ; as the sparrow, swallow, sky-lark. When it 

 happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod 

 into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a singing ; 

 or in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as 

 it is awakened it reassumes it's song. 



LETTER XL. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, 



BEFORE your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been 

 remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female 

 swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; so that there 

 was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli : and 

 besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the 

 employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the 

 sexes, nor the individuals of different chimnies the one for the 

 other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that 

 each sex has the long feathers in it's tail that give it that forked 

 shape ; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of 

 the male than in that of the female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are 

 helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a 

 snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they 

 walk : these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance. 



1 [Brit. Zool., voL ii., p.] 475. 2 15. 



3 [Georg., IV., 54.] 4 [Brit. Zool., voL ii., p.] 16. 



