io8 The Natural History 



to the most incurious observer that they whistle the year 

 round, hard frost excepted ; especially the latter. 



It was not in my power to [)rocure you a black-cap, or 

 a less reed-sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is 

 undoubtedly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a 

 summer bird of passage, they would require more nice 

 and curious management in a cage than I should be able 

 to give them ; they are both distinguished songsters. 

 The note of the former has such a wild sweetness that it 

 always brings to my mind those lines in a song in 

 "As You Like It," 



"And tune his merry note 

 Unto tlie K//A/ bird's throat." — .SllAKESTEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling 

 the song of several other birds ; but then it also has an 

 hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage ; it is not- 

 withstanding a delicate polyglot. 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; 

 perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame 

 red-breast in a cage that always sang as long as candles 

 were in the room ; but in their wild state no one supposes 

 they sing in the night. 



I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there 

 are to be seen much fewer birds in July than in any 

 former month, notwithstanding so many young are 

 hatched daily. Sure I am that it is far otherwise with 

 respect to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously 

 as the summer advances : and I saw, at the time men- 

 tioned, many hundreds of young wagtails on the banks of 

 the Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If 

 the matter appears as you say in the other species, may 

 it not be owing to the dams being engaged in incubation, 

 while the j'oung are concealed by the leaves ? 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the 

 stomachs of woodcocks and snipes ; but nothing ever 

 occurred that helped to explain to me what their sub- 

 sistence might be : all that I could ever find was a soft 

 mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. 



I am, etc. 



