SCOPOLl's ANNUS PRIMUS. 99 



can alone investigate all the works of nature, these 

 partial writers may, each in their department, be 

 more accurate in their discoveries, and freer from 

 errors, than more general writers, and so by degrees 

 may pave the way to an universal correct natural 

 history. Not that Scopoli is so circumstantial and 

 attentive to the life and conversation of his birds 

 as I could wish : he advances some false facts ; as 

 when he says of the hirundo urbica, that " pullos 

 extra nidum non nutrit 1 ." This assertion I know to 

 be wrong, from repeated observation this summer ; 

 for house-martins do feed their young flying, though, 

 it must be acknowledged, not so commonly as the 

 house-swallow, and the feat is done in so quick a 

 manner as not to be perceptible to indifferent ob- 

 servers. He also advances some (I was going to 

 say) improbable facts ; as when he says of the 

 woodcock that " pullos rostro port at fugiens ab 

 hoste 2 ." But candour forbids me to say absolutely 

 that any fact is false, because I have never been 

 witness to such a fact. I have only to remark, 

 that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is 

 perhaps the worst adapted of any among the 

 winged creation for such a feat of natural affection. 



XXXII. 



AFTER an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Brisson, 

 &c. I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's 

 hirundo hyberna in Scopoli's new-discovered hi- 

 rundo rupestris, p. 167. His description of "Supra 

 murina, subtus albida ; rectrices macula ovali albd in 

 latere interno ; pedes nudi, nigri; rostrum nigrum; 



1 " The house-martin does not feed its young outside the 

 nest." 



2 " It carries its young in its beak when flying from an 

 enemy." 



H2 



