of Selborne 123 



and, to the best of my remembrance, the collar was in 

 the possession of the rector. 



At present I do not know anybody near the sea-side 

 that will take the trouble to remark at what time of the 

 moon woodcocks first come : if I lived near the sea 

 myself I would soon tell you more of the matter. One 

 thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman, that 

 there were times in which woodcocks were so sluggish 

 and sleepy that they would drop again when flushed just 

 before the spaniels, nay just at the muzzle of a gun that 

 had been fired at them : whether this strange laziness 

 was the effect of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not 

 presume to say. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland 

 and Scotland, but also, as I have been always told, 

 Devonshire and Cornwall. In those two last counties 

 we cannot attribute the failure of them to the want of 

 warmth : the defect in the west is rather a presumptive 

 argument that these birds come over to us from the 

 continent at the narrowest passage, and do not stroll so 

 far westward. 



Let me hear from your own observation whether sky- 

 larks do not dust. I think they do : and if they do, 

 whether they wash also. 



The alaiida prafe?isis of Ray was the poor dupe that 

 was educating the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my 

 letter of October last. 



Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring- 

 ousel for Mr. Tunstal during tlieir autumnal visit ; but I 

 will endeavour to get him one when they call on us 

 again in April. I am glad that you and that gentleman 

 saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope they answered your 

 expectation. Royston, or grey crows, are winter birds 

 that come much about the same time with the wood- 

 cock : they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no 

 apparent reason for migration ; for as they fare in the 

 winter like their congeners, so might they in all appear- 

 ance in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, 

 mistaken ? did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, and 

 take it for the nest of a fieldfare ? 



