90 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
LETTER XXVIII. 
TO THOMAS PENXANT, ESQ. 
I WAS mucli gratified by your cominiinicative letter on your 
return from Scotland, where you spent, I find, some consider- 
able time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural 
curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, 
as well as those of tlie highlands. The usual bane of such 
expeditions is hurry ; because men seldom allot themselves half 
the time they should do : but, fixing on a day for their return, 
post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey 
that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the 
works of nature. You must have made, no doubt, many dis- 
coveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future 
edition of the British Zoology ; and will have no reason to 
repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part of 
Great Britain that perlinps was never so well examined before. 
It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, 
which are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should 
never choose to breed in England : but that they should not 
think even the highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered 
enough, is a circumstance still more strange and wonderful. 
The ring-ousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year 
round ; so that we have reason to conclude that those migrators 
that visit us for a short space every autumn do not come from 
thence. 
And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that 
those birds were most punctual again in their migration this 
autumn, appearing, as before, about the thirtieth of September : 
but their flocks were larger than common, and their stay pro- 
tracted somewhat beyond the usual time. If they came to 
spend the whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, 
and then left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much 
struck with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of 
the other winter birds of passage ; but when I see them for a 
