152 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER VI. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, May 21, 1770. 



HE severity and turbulence of last month so 

 interrupted the regular process of summer 

 migration, that some of the birds do but just 

 begin to show themselves, and others are 

 apparently thinner than usual ; as tho^white- 

 throat, the blackcap, the redstart, the flycatcher. I well 

 remember that after the very severe spring in the year 

 1739-40, summer birds of passage were very scarce. They 

 come probably hither with a south-east wind, or when it 

 blows between those points ; but in that unfavourable year 

 the winds blowed the whole spring and summer through 

 from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these dis- 

 advantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared 

 this year as early as the llth of April, amidst frostand snow; 

 but they withdrew again for a time. 



I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little 

 satisfied with Scopoli' s new publication ; l there is room to 

 expect great things from the hands of that man, who is a 

 good naturalist : and one would think that a history of 

 the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola 

 would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that 

 work, and hope to get it sent down. 2 Dr. Scopoli is physi- 

 cian to the wretches that work in the quicksilver mines of 

 that district. 



When you talked of keeping a reed sparrow, and giving 



1 This work be calls his " Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis." G.W. 



2 Later in the same year the author procured the work here spoken 

 of. His observations on it will be found in his Letters to Pennant, 

 numbered XXXI. and XXXII., as well as incidentally in others. See 

 also the following Letter. ED. 



