OF 8ELB0BNE, 145 
von lieard so very few birds, is not a woodland country, 
and therefore not stocked with such songsters. If you will 
cast your eye on my last letter, you will find that many 
species continued to warble after the beginning of July, 
The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very 
late; and thertfore it is no wonder that they protract their 
song : for I lav it down as a maxim in ornithology, tha^t as 
long as there is ^xny incubation going on there is music. As 
to the redbreast, and wren, it is well known to the most 
incurious observer that they whistle the year round, hard 
frost excepted ; especially the latter. 
It was not in my power to procure you a blackcap, or a 
less reed-sparrow, or sedge bird, alive. As the first is un- 
doubtedly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer 
bird of passage, they would require more nice and curious 
management in a cage than I should be able to give them : 
they are both distinguished songsters. The note of the 
former has such a wild sweetness that it brings to my mind 
those lines in a song in As You Like It."'' 
" And tune his merry note 
Unto tile wild bird's throat.'* 
Shakspeare. 
The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling 
the song of several other birds; but then it has also a 
hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage : it is notwith- 
standing a delicate polyglot. 
It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; 
perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame red- 
breast in a cage that always sang as long as candles were in 
the room ; but in their wild state no one supposes they sing 
in the night. 
I should be almost ready to doubt tlie fact, that there are 
to be seen much fewer birds in July than in any former 
month, notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily. 
Sure I am, that it is far otherwise with respoot to the swallow 
tribe, which increases prodigiously as the sur<^?r^er advances : 
and I saw, at the time mentioned, many hundi eds of young 
wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered 
the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in the 
L 
