100 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



When we meet I shall be glad to have some conversation with you 

 concerning the proposal you make of my drawing up an account of the 

 animals in this neighbourhood. Your partiality towards my smalt 

 abilities persuades you, I fear, that I am able to do more than is in my 

 power : for it is no small undertaking for a man unsupported and alone 

 to begin a natural history from his own autopsia ! Though there is 

 endless room for observation in the field of nature, which is boundless, 

 yet investigation (where a man endeavours to be sure of his facts) can 

 make but slow progress ; and all that one could collect in many years 

 would go into a very narrow compass. 



Some extracts from your ingenious " Investigations of the Difference 

 between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy," Ac., have fallen 

 in my way; and gave me great stisfaction : they have removed the 

 objections .that always arose in my mind whenever I came to the 

 passages which you quote. Surely the judicious Virgil, when writing a 

 didactic poem for the region of Italy, could never think of describing 

 freezing rivers, unless such severity of weather pretty frequently 

 occurred ! 



P.S. Swallows appear amidst snows and frost. 



LETTEK YL 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, May 21 st, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The severity and turbulence of last month so interrupted 

 the regular process of summer migration, that some of the birds do but 

 just begin to show themselves, and others are apparently thinner than 

 usual ; as the white-throat, the black-cap, the red-start, the fly-catcher. 

 I well remember that after the very severe spring in the year 1739-40, 

 summer birds of passage were very scarce. They come probably hither 

 with a south-east wind, or when it blows between those points ; but in 

 that unfavourable year the winds blowed the whole spring and summer 

 through from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these 

 disadvantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared this 

 year as early as the eleventh of April amidst frost and snow ; but they 

 withdrew again for a time. 



I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little satisfied with 

 Scopoli's new publication ; there is room to expect great things from 

 the hands of that man, who is a good naturalist : and one would think 

 that an history of the birds of so distant and southern a region as 

 Carniola would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that work, 

 and hope to get it sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches 

 that work in the quicksilver mines of that district.* 



When you talked of keeping a reed-sparrow, and giving it seeds, I 

 could not help Wondering ; because the reed-sparrow which I mentioned 

 to you (Passer arundinaceus minor Rail) is a soft-billed bird; and 

 most probably migrates hence before winter; whereas the bird 



* See note, Letter XXXI. 



