NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 83 



Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock sings 

 from morning to night : he affects neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, 

 and loves to build in orchards and about houses ; with us he perches on 

 the vane of a tall maypole. 



The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute and the 

 most familiar ; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, or a 

 sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on 

 the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where 

 people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make the 

 least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it 

 thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances : it breeds but 

 once, and retires early. 



Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than half 

 the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden ; the former has produced 

 more than one hundred and twenty species, the latter only two hundred 

 and twenty-one. Let me add also that it has shown near half the 

 species that were ever known in Great Britain.* 



On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint 

 and magisterial air, and is very sententious ; but when I recollect that 

 you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the 

 didactic manner for the sake of the information it may happen to 

 contain. 



LETTEE XLI. 



TO THE SAME. 



IT is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft- 

 billed birds that continue with us the winter through, subsist during 

 the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only 

 reason why they shun the rigour of our winters ; for the robust wry- 

 neck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood-peckers) migrates, 

 while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves 

 our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to 

 which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this 

 keeps aloof in fields and woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason 

 why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any 

 bird we know. 



I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter 

 with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species 

 of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their spring- 

 heads, where they never freeze ; ahd, by wading, pick out the aurelias 

 of the genus of Phryganece^ &c. 



* Sweden 221, Great Britain 252 species. 1 

 t See Derham's "Physico-theology," p. 235, and note, Letter XIII., p. 35. 



1 In the British islands generally, between 320 and 350 are now known, and 

 occasional additions are continuing to be made. Thus Mr. Yarrel has within the 

 last month noticed the dusky petrel as occurring within the limits of the British 

 seas. Mr. William Thompson in 1849 gave 262 species to Ireland. 



G 2 



