SCOPOLI'S AITNUS PEIMirS. 127 



their departure ; but it was very extraordinary that I never 

 saw a red-start, white-tliroat, black-cap, uncrested wren, iiy- 

 catcber, &c. ; and I remember to have made the same remark 

 in former years, as I usually come to tbia place annually 

 about this time. The birds most common along the coast, at 

 present, are the stone-chatters, whia-chats, buntings, bnnets, 

 some few wheat-ears, titlarks, &c. Swallows and house- 

 martins abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by this 

 soft, stOl, dry season. 



A land-tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a 

 little walled court belonging to the house where I am now 

 visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, 

 and comes forth again, about the middle of April. When it 

 first appears in the spring, it discovers very little inclination 

 towards food, but in the height of summer grows voracious, 

 and ,then, as the summer declines, its appetite declines ; so 

 that for the last sis weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. 

 Mjlky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are 

 its favourite dish. In a n^ghbouring village one was kept 

 till, by tradition, it was supposed to be an hundred years old, 

 — an instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile ! 



LETTEE XXSIX. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



Selborne, Oct. 29, 1770. 

 Deab Sib, — ^After an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Bris- 

 son, Sec, I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's 

 hirundo liyberna in ScopoH's new-discovered hi/rundo rupes- 

 tris, p. 167. His description of "Supra murina, subtus albida; 

 tectrices macula ovali alba in latere imterno ; pedes nudi, nigri ; 

 rostrum nigrum ; remiges obscuriores guam plwmoB dorsales ; 

 rectrices remigihus coneolores ; cauda ema/rgvnatd nee ford- 

 patd," agrees very weU. with the bird in question ; but when 

 he comes to advance that it is " statura hirundinis urbicce" 

 and that " dejinito hi/rwidmis ripa/rioe Zmmwi Jiuic quoque 

 convenif," he, in some measure, invalidates all he has said; 



