120 



NATURAL HISTORY 



Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, 

 or young wild ducks. 



Speaking of the swift (vol. iv. p. 15) that page says "its 

 drink the dew/' whereas it should be, " it drinks on the 

 wing/' for all the swallow kind sip their water as they 

 sweep over the face of pools or rivers ; like Virgil's bees, 

 they drink flying, " flumina summa libant." In this method 

 of drinking, perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 



Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of 

 the night. Its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, 

 and imitative of several birds, as the sparrow, swallow, sky - 

 lark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throw* 

 ing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits, you 

 immediately set it a singing, or, in other words, though it 

 slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it re- 

 assumes its song. 



LETTER XL. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



SELBORNE, Sept. 2, 1774. 



EFORE your letter- arrived, and of my own 

 accord, I had been remarking and comparing 

 the tails of the male and female swallow, and 

 this ere any young broods appeared ; so 

 that there was no danger of confounding 

 the dams with their pulli. And besiles, as they were then 

 always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, 

 there could be no room for mistaking the sexes, nor the 

 individuals of different chimneys the one for the other. 

 From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each 

 sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked 

 shape, with this difference, that they are longer in the tail 

 of the male than in that of the female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and 

 are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also 



