LETTER VI 1 

 TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE, May 2ist, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The severity and turbulence of last month so 

 interrupted the regular process of summer migration, that 

 some of the birds do but just begin to show themselves, 

 and others are apparently thinner than usual ; as the white- 

 throat, the black-cap, the red-start, the fly-catcher. I well 

 remember that after the very severe spring in the year 

 1739-40, summer birds of passage were very scarce. They 

 came probably hither with a south-east wind, or when it 

 blows between those points ; but in that unfavourable year 

 the winds blowed the whole spring and summer through 

 from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these 

 disadvantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, 

 appeared this year as early as the eleventh of April 

 amidst frost and snow; but they withdrew again for a 

 time. 



I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little 

 satisfied with Scopolis new publication ; 2 there is room to 

 expect great things from the hands of that man, who is a 

 good naturalist : and one would think that an history of 

 the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola 

 would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that 

 work, and hope to get it sent down. Dr. Scopoli is 

 physician to the wretches that work in the quicksilver 

 mines of that district. 



1 This letter ends abruptly in the original MS. It is torn across, but seems 

 to have had a P.S. at one time.] [R- B. S.] 



* This work he calls his Annus Primus Historico Naturalis.[G. W.] 



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