128 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with 

 more steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, the 

 wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the 

 goldfinch, the common hnnet, are all undoubted instances 

 of the truth of what I advance. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity 

 of the summer migrations, the black-cap will be 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 used to birds in a cage, that I fear if I had 

 one it would soon die for want of skill in feeding. 



Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept in a cage, the 

 thick-billed reed-sparrow of the Zoology, p. 320 ; or was 

 it the less reed-sparrow of Ray, the sedge-bird of Mr. 

 Pennant's last publication, p. 16 ? 



As to the matter of long-billed birds growing fatter in 

 moderate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what 

 should be the reason. The thriving at those times 

 appears to me to arise altogether from the gentle check 

 which the cold throws upon insensible perspiration. The 

 case is just the same with blackbirds, etc. ; and farmers 

 and warreners observe, the first, that their hogs fat more 

 kindly at such times, and the latter that the rabbits are 

 never in such good case as in a gentle frost. But when 

 frosts are severe, and of long continuance, the case is 

 soon altered ; for then a want of food soon overbalances 

 the repletion occasioned by a checked perspiration. I 

 have observed, moreover, that some human constitutions 

 are more inclined to plumpness in winter than in summer. 



When birds come to suffer by severe frost, I find that 

 the first that fail and die are the redwing-fieldfares, and 

 then the song-thrushes. 



You wonder, with good reason, that the hedge-sparrows, 

 etc., can be induced to sit at all on the egg of the cuckoo 

 without being scandalised at the vast disproportioned size 



