t'6 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTEE III. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Jan. 15th, 1770. 



DEAR Sin, It was no small matter of satisfaction to me to find that 

 you were not displeased with my little methodus of birds. If there 

 was any merit in the sketch, it must be owing to its punctuality. For 

 many months I carried a list in my pocket of the birds that were to be 

 remarked, and, as I rode or walked about my business, I noted 

 each day the continuance or omission of each bird's song ; so that I am 

 as sure of the certainty of my facts as a man can be of any transaction 

 whatsoever. 



I shall now proceed to answer the several queries which you put in 

 your two obliging letters, in the best manner that I am able. Perhaps 

 East wick, and its environs, where you heard so very few birds, is not a 

 woodland country, and therefore not stocked with such songsters. If 

 you will cast your eye on my last letter, you will find that many 

 species continued to warble after the beginning of July. 



The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late ; and 

 therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song : for I lay it 

 down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is any incubation 

 going on there is music. As to the redbreast 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 undoubtedly, and the last, 

 as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would require 

 more nice and curious management in a cage than I should be able to 

 give them : they are 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." SHAKESPEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song of 

 several other birds ; but then it has also an 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 ; perhaps only 

 caged birds do so. I once knew a tame redbreast 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 bealmost 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 wag-tails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered 

 the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in the other species, 



