120 
NATURAL HISTORY 
Forest in the beginning of July last^ along witli flappers, 
or young wild ducks. 
Speaking of the swift (vol. iv. p. 15) that page says '^its 
drink the dew/^ whereas it should be, " it drinks on the 
wing/^ for all the swallow kind sip their water as they 
sweep over the face of pools or rivers ; like Virgil's bees, 
they drink flying, '^flumina summa lihant.'' In this method 
of drinking, perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 
Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of 
the night. Its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, 
and imitative of several birds, as the sparrow, swallow, sky- 
lark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throw- 
ing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits, you 
immediately set it a singing, or, in other words, though it 
slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it re- 
assumes its song. 
LETTER XL. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774. 
EFORE your letter arrived, and of my own 
accord, I had been remarking and comparing 
the tails of the male and female swallow, and 
this ere any young broods appeared ; so 
that there was no danger of confounding 
the dams with their pi*ZZ*. And besiies, as they were then 
always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, 
there could be no room for mistaking the sexes, nor the 
individuals of difierent chimneys the one for the other. 
From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each 
sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked 
shape, with this difierence, that they are longer in the tail 
of the male than in that of the female. 
Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and 
are hel])less, make a plaintive and a jarring noise; and also 
