THE REV. JOHN WHITE. 



LETTER XVI. 



Selborne, Aug. 11, 1774. 



Dear Brother, 

 My best thanks are due for your strictures on my mono- 

 graphies, of which I shall avail myself in many particulars, 

 and hope you will extend them to the swift. But I am 

 greatly disappointed with respect to Mr. L.*, from whom, as a 

 good practical ornithologist, I expected several new remarks 

 and observations, but I don't find that he sent you one. 

 Surely that gent.'s scheme with regard to his museum is a 

 strange one ; for as I cannot suppose that a man of his spirit 

 will take money, so, if he entertains that great beast of a town 

 for nothing (gratis), it will cost him thousands and be quite a 

 ruinous expence ! Swifts may breed twice at Gibraltar^ as 

 far as I know, because they arrive there much earlier than 

 with us. But it is past all doubt that with us the case is 

 quite different; for they do not arrive 'til the first week in 

 May, do not hatch 'til the middle of June, and this year 

 and the last departed by the seventh of August. Down at 

 Fyfield I opened the eaves of some roofs on June 30, and 

 found sqUab helpless young, and invariably but two in a 

 nest ; so that their congeners, who lay all round from four 

 to six eggs, and produce invariably two broods iti a year, 

 increase five times as fast as they do. Linna3us is wrong even 

 in doubting whether the Hirundo hyemalis be a variety of the 

 apus; for the feet, the bill, the whole habit bespeak it an 

 absolute swallow, not a swift f . The melba is an absolute apus-. 

 Pray send me a copy of that gent.'s last letter ; I love to see 

 the letters of great and able men in any way. Don't regard 

 the want of franks. I pay 2^d. for a nonsensical newspaper, 

 and shall I hesitate to pay Id. for the sight of an epistle from 

 the greatest naturalist in Europe? He will insert you in the 



* [Lever.] 



t [See Liunpeus's letter of Jan. 2nd, 1774, afterwards printed. — T. B.] 



D 2 



