OF SELBOBNE. 
87 
LETTER XXVI. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, Dec. 8, 1769. 
WAS mucli gratified by your communicative 
letter on your return from Scotland, where 
you spent, I find, some considerable time, 
and gave yourself good room to examine the 
natural curiosities of that extensive king- 
dom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the 
highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry ; 
because men seldom allot themselves half the time they 
should do j 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 
discoveries, 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 perhaps was never so well examined 
before. 
It has always been matter of wonder to me that field- 
fares, 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 Scot- 
land the whole year round ; so that we have reason to con- 
clude 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 migra- 
tion this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th of 
September: but their flocks were larger than common, and 
