LETTER IX 

 t TO THE SAME 



FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. izth, 1771. 



DEAR SIR, [As my last letter was full, and I had not 

 room to finish what I proposed ; I sit down now with an 

 intention of advancing what I have farther to say on that 

 occasion, and of answering your agreeable letter of Jan : 

 the 3 rd .] You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; 

 and the well-attested accounts from various parts of the 

 kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at 

 least many of the swallow kind do not leave us in the 

 winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a 

 torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable 

 months till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens 

 them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in 

 general ; because migration certainly does subsist in some 

 places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. 

 Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration, 

 for many weeks together, both spring and fall ; during 

 which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the 

 Straits from north to south, and from south to north, 

 according to the season. And these vast migrations con- 

 sist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, Oro 

 pendolos y or golden thrushes f &c. &c., and also of many of 

 our soft-billed summer birds of passage ; and moreover of 

 birds which never leave us, such as all the various sorts 

 of hawks and kites. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, 



1 The Golden Oriole (Oriolus galbula) is called in Spain " Oro pcndola" 

 Cf. Irby, "Orn. Gibraltar," p. 125. [R. B. S.] 



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