132 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



and return in spring. This information seems to throw some 

 light on my new migration. 



[If you do not receive a letter from my Brother in 

 Thames-street in due time, you must not be surprized, 

 because I know he is from home. He wrote me word 

 some time ago that he had sent the birds by the Chester 

 waggon.] 



Scopoli's 1 new work (which I have just procured) has 

 it's merit in ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol 

 and Carniola. Monographers, come from whence they 

 may, have, I think, fair pretence to challenge some regard 

 and approbation from the lovers of natural history ; for, as 

 no man can alone investigate the works of nature, these 

 partial writers may, each in their department, be more 

 accurate in their discoveries, and freer from errors, than 

 more general writers ; and so by degrees may pave the way 

 to an universal correct natural history. Not that Scopoli is 

 so circumstantial and attentive to the life and conversation 

 of his birds as I could wish : he advances some false facts ; 

 as when he says of the hirundo urbica that " pullos extra 

 nidum non nutrit." This assertion I know to be wrong from 

 repeated observation this summer ; for house-martins do 

 feed their young flying, though it must be acknowledged 

 not so commonly as the house-swallow ; and the feat is 

 done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to in- 

 different observers. He also advances some (I was going 

 to say) improbable facts ; as when he says of the woodcock 

 that "pullos rostro portat fugiens ab hostel' But candour 

 forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false, because 

 I have never been witness to such a fact. I have only to 

 remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is per- 



1 " Annus I. Historico Naturalis, descriptiones avium musei proprii earumque 

 rariorum, quos vidit in vivaria augustiss. imperatoris, et in museo excell. comitis 

 Francisci Annib. Turriani." Lipsiae, MDCCLXVIII. In the preface to the above 

 work Scopoli states, " Observationes meas ad scientiam naturalem et agriculturam 

 pertinentes singulis annis erudito orbi in posterum communicabo," and the Anni 

 were continued for five years, and contain some very valuable papers and observa- 

 tions ; the first is devoted entirely to ornithology. The last (Annus V.) bears the 

 date of MDCCLXXII." fjardine's ed., p. 87, notes.] 



