152 
NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTER YI. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selborne, May 21, 1770. 
HE severity and turbulence of last month, so 
interrupted the regular process of summer 
migration, that some of the birds do but just 
begin to show themselves, and others are 
apparently thinner than usual ; as the white- 
throat, the blackcap, the redstart, the flycatcher. I well 
remember that after the very severe spring in the year 
1739-40, summer birds of passage were very scarce. They 
come probably hither with a south-east wind, or when it 
blows between those points ; but in that unfavourable year 
the winds blowed the whole spring and summer through 
from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these dis- 
advantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared 
this year as early as the 11th of April, amidst frost and snow; 
but they withdrew again for a time. 
I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little 
satisfied with Scopoli^s new publication ;^ there is room to 
expect great things from the hands of that man, who is a 
good naturalist: and one would think that a history of 
the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola 
would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that 
work, and hope to get it sent down.^ Dr. Scopoli is physi- 
cian to the wretches that work in the quicksilver mines of 
that district. 
When you talked of keeping a reed sparrow, and giving 
^ This work lie calls his "Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis." — G.W. 
^ Later in the same year the author procured the work here spoken 
of. His observations on it will be found in his Letters to Pennant, 
numbered XXXT. and XXXII., as weU as incidentally in others. See 
also the following Letter. — Ed. 
