OF SELBOENE. 145 



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 blackcap, or a 

 less reed-sparrow, or sedgo bird, alive. As the first is un- 

 doubtedly, 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 brings to my mind 

 those lines in a song in <( As You Like It." 



" And tune his merry note 

 Unto tlie wild bird's throat." 



SHAKSPEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling 

 the song of several other birds; but then it has also a 

 hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage : it is notwith- 

 standing 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 red- 

 breast 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 be almost 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 

 wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered 

 the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in tho 



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