OF SELBORNE. 149 



What was said by a very ancient and sublime writer con- 

 cerning the defect of natural affection in the ostrich, may be 

 well applied to the bird we are talking of: 



" She is hardened against her young ones, as though they 

 wore not her's : 



" Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath 

 he imparted to her understanding." ] 



Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a 

 season, or does she drop several in different nests according 

 as opportunity offers ? 2 



LETTER Y. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, April 12, 1770. 



HEARD many birds of several species sing 

 last year after midsummer ; enough to prove 

 that the summer solstice is not the period that 

 puts a stop to the music of the woods. The 

 yellowhammer, no doubt, persists with more 

 steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, the wren, the 

 redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, the goldfinch, the 

 common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of 

 what I advanced. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of 

 the summer migrations, the blackcap will bo here in two or 

 three days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one 

 of those songsters ; but I am no birdcatcher ; and so little 



and Professor A. Newton, in "Nature" of Nov. 18, 1869, and his new 

 edition of YarrelTs " History of British Birds." Reference should also 

 be made to Mr. Stevenson's chapter on the cuckoo, in his " Birds of 

 Norfolk," vol. i. p. 303, and, if the reader's patience is not then exhausted, 

 to a couple of articles by the writer of this note, contributed to " Science 

 Gossip" of May 1, 1870, and "The Field" of Nov. 22, 1873. ED. 

 1 Job xxxix. 16, 17. * See p. 151, note 1. ED 



