106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Primus," of the woodcock, that " nupta ad nos venit circd cequinoctium 

 vernale ; " meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And afterwards 

 he adds " nidificat in paludibus alpinis : ova ponit 3 5." It does not 

 appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria ; but he 

 says, " Avis hcec septentrionalium provindarum cestivo tempore incola 

 est ; ubi plerumque nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme australiores 

 provincial petit ; hinc circa plenilunium mensis Octobris plerumque 

 Austriam transmigrat. Tune rursils circa plenilunium potissimum 

 mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales 

 provincias redit" For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see 

 "Elenchus," &c. p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the migra- 

 tion of woodcocks; though little is proved concerning the place of 

 breeding. 



P.S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks of this 

 present very wet weather, seven inches and a half of rain, which is 

 more than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past in 

 that part of the world. A mean quantity in that county for one year 

 is twenty inches and a half. 



LETTEE IX. 



TO THE SAME. 



FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. 12th, 1T72. 



DEAR SIR, You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; and the 

 well-attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to 

 justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind 

 do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and 

 bats, in a torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable months 

 till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general ; because 

 migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in 

 Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has 

 ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall ; 

 during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the Straits 

 from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season. 

 And these vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, 

 hoopoes, Oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c., and also of many of 

 our soft-billed summer birds of passage ; and moreover of birds which 

 never leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and kites. Old 

 Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the incredible 

 armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring-time traversing 

 the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe. Besides the above-men- 

 tioned, he remarks that the procession is swelled by whole troops of 

 eagles and vultures. 



nests were at various heights from the ground, from four to thirty or forty feet, or 

 upwards, mixed with old ones of the preceding year ; they were for the most part 

 placed against the trunk of the spruce fir, and resembled most nearly those of the 

 ring-ousel." 



