178 



NATURAL HISTORY 



the most mute and the most familiar ; it 

 also appears the last of any. It builds in a 

 vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of an 

 house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the 

 end of a beam or plate, and often close to 

 the post of a door where people are going 

 in and out all day long. This bird does not 

 make the least pretension to song, but uses 

 a little inward wailing note when it thinks 

 its young in danger from cats or other an- 

 noyances : it breeds but once, and retires 

 early. 



Selborne parish alone can and has exhi- 

 bited at times more than half the birds that 

 are ever seen in all Sweden ; the former 

 has produced more than one hundred and 

 twenty species, the latter only two hundred 

 and twenty-one. Let me add also that it 

 has shown near half the species that were 

 ever known in Great- Britain.^ 



On a retrospect, I observe that my long 

 letter carries with it a quaint and magis- 

 terial air, and is very sententious ; but, when 



* Sweden 221, Great'Britain 252 species. 



