116 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a 

 near relation of mine ; and, to the best of my remembrance, the 

 collar was in the possession of the rector. 1 



At present I do not know any body near the sea-side that will 

 take the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks 

 first come : if I lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you 

 more of the matter. One thing I used to observe when I was a 

 sportsman, that there were times in which woodcocks were so 

 sluggish and sleepy that they would drop again when flushed 

 just before the spaniels, nay just at the muzzle of a gun that had 

 been fired at them : whether this strange laziness was the effect 

 of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland, 

 but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. 

 In those two last counties we cannot attribute the failure of them 

 to the want of warmth : the defect in the west is rather a pre- 

 sumptive argument that these birds come over to us from the 

 continent at the narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far 

 westward. 2 



Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do 

 not dust. I think they do : and if they do, whether they wash 

 also. 



The alauda pratensis of Ray was the poor dupe that was 

 educating the booby of a cuckoo mentioned 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 gentleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope 

 they answered your expectation. Royston, or grey crows, are 

 winter birds that come much about the same time with the wood- 

 cock : 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. 



1 [Mr. Harting has an interesting note on this passage, in which he maintains 

 that the "duck" was really a cormorant ; he points out that cormorants were in 

 the seventeenth century often trained for fishing purposes, and wore collars, usually 

 of leather. But it is hardly likely that a cormorant could be mistaken for a duck.] 



2 [White was here correct in his view of the nightingale's distribution. A line 

 drawn from Start Point to the mouth of the Humber will include, to the south and 

 east, all our nightingales but a few stragglers (Newton). If it be true, as has been 

 maintained, that this species migrates "almost due north and south" (Blyth), 

 White's inference that they come over to us at the narrowest passage is not correct ; 

 but the facts do not seem to be as yet accurately ascertained.] 



