OF SELBOENE. 87 



LETTER XXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



SELBORNE, Dec. 8, 1769. 



AS much gratified by your communicative 

 letter on your return from Scotland, where 

 you spent, I find, some considerable time, 

 and gave yourself good room to examine the 

 natural curiosities of that extensive king- 

 dom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the 

 highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry ; 

 because men seldom allot themselves half the time they 

 should do ; but, fixing on a day for their return, post from 

 place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that 

 required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the 

 works of nature. You must have made, no doubt, many 

 discoveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future 

 edition of the " British Zoology;" and will have no reason 

 to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part 

 of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined 

 before. 



It has always been matter of wonder to me that field- 

 fares, which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, 

 should never choose to breed in England : but that they 

 should not think even the highlands cold and northerly, and 

 sequestered enough, is a circumstance still more strange 

 and wonderful. The ring-ousel, you find, stays in Scot- 

 land the whole year round ; so that we have reason to con- 

 clude that those migrators that visit us for a short space 

 every autumn do not come from thence. 



And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention 

 that those birds were most punctual again in their migra- 

 tion this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th of 

 September : but their flocks were larger than common, and 



