80 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOKNE. 



playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with 

 their mouths : but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, 

 or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say ; but this I 

 know, that when this noise happens the bird is always descending, and 

 his wings are violently agitated. 



Soon after the lapwings * have done breeding they congregate, and, 

 leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep- 

 walks. 



Two years ago t last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, 

 but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, 

 where there is a great lake : it was kept awhile, but died. 



I saw young teals J taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the 

 beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks. 



Speaking of the swift, that page says " its drink the dew ; " whereas 

 it should be " it drinks on the wing ; " for all the swallow kind sip their 

 water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers : like Yirgil's bees, 

 they drink flying ; "flumina summa libant." In this method of 

 drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 



Of the sedge-bird || be pleased to say it sings most part of the night ; 

 its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several 

 birds ; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent 

 in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits 

 you immediately set it a-singing ; or in other words, though it slumbers 

 sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song. 



LETTEE XL. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Sept. 2nd, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had 

 been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, 

 and this ere any young broods appeared ; so that there was no danger 

 of confounding the dams with their pidli : and besides, as they were 

 then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there 

 could be no room for mistaking the 'sexes, nor the individuals of 

 different chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, it 

 constantly appeared that each sex has the long feathers in its tail that 

 give it that forked shape ; with this difference, that they are longer in 

 the tail of the male than in that of the female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are helpless, 

 make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a snapping or cracking, 

 pursuing people along the hedges as they walk : these last sounds seem 

 intended for menace and defiance. 



The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of summer. TJ 



* p. 360. f p. "409. J p. 475. p. 15. |] p. 16. 



1 Salicaria locustella, see Letter XVI. 



