WOODCOCKS AND SNIPES. 79 



to the red-breast and wren, it is well known to the most 

 incurious observer, that they whistle the year round, hard frost 

 excepted ; especially the latter. 



It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a 

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

 edly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of 

 passage, they would require more nice and curious manage- 

 ment in a cage than I should be able to give them: they were 

 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 the wild bird's throat. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes, resembling the 

 song of several other birds ; but then it has also a hurrying 

 manner, not at all to its advantage. It is, notwithstanding, a 

 delicate polyglot. 



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

 haps 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 mentioned, many hundreds of young wagtails 

 on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered the mea- 

 dows. 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 young 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 subsistence might be ; all that I 

 could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many 

 pellucid small gravels. * 



by the addition of orange trees and evergreens, where they will breed, as 

 in a state of nature. Here they exhibit no signs of suffering captivity ; 

 on the contrary, it is delightful to see them, in a stormy day, enjoying 

 the warmth of summer, while their cheerful notes prove they have no 

 heart-rending cares. ED. 



* The food of the woodcock and snipe has not yet been properly 



