LETTER V 



TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE, April i2th, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, [Your two kind Letters of Jan : 20 : and 

 Feb : 5 : lie before me, and reproach me for not paying 

 them that regard they deserve long before now.] 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 yellow- 

 hammer 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. 1 



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 ? 2 



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 



1 In the original MS. a note is inserted about the occurrence of ' aberdavines ' 

 (a present-day name for Siskins, Chrysomitris spinus), but Gilbert White did not 

 publish the note in his book, and afterwards found that the birds were Reed- 

 Buntings (Emberiza schceniclus). See Letter VIII. [R. B. S.] 



8 See Letter XXV to Pennant (vol. i. p. 107). 



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