MIGRATING BIRDS. 161 



P.S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in 

 three weeks of this present very wet weather, 

 seven inches and a half of rain, which is more 

 than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty 

 years past in that part of the world. A mean 

 quantity in that county, for one year, is twenty 

 inches and a half. 



IX. 



[\ 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 sus- 

 picions, 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 consist not only of hirundines, but 

 of bee-birds, hoopoes, oro pendolos, or golden 

 thrushes, &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, gives a curious account 

 of the incredible armies of hawks and kites 



