OF SELBORNF. 
161 
Ausfriam transm igrat. Tunc rursus circa plenilunium potis- 
simum mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad 
septentrionales provincias redit.'^ For the whole passage 
(wMcli I have abridged) see Elenchus, &c._, p. 351. This 
seems to be a full proof of the migration of woodcocks ; 
though little is proved concerning the place of breeding/ 
P.S. — There fell in the county of Rutland, in three 
weeks of this present very wet weather, seven inches and a 
half of rain, which is more than has fallen in any three 
weeks for these thirty years past in that part of the world. 
A mean quantity in that county for one year is twenty 
inches and a half. 
LETTER IX. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771. 
OU are, I know, no great friend to migra- 
tion ; and the well attested accounts from 
various parts of the kingdom seem to justify 
you in your suspicions, that at least many 
of the swallow kind do not leave us in tho 
winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a 
torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable 
months till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens 
them. 
But then we must not, I think, deny migration in 
general; because migration certainly does subsist in some 
places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed mo. 
Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration. 
* It is now well known that altliongh a large proportion of the wood- 
cocks which visit us in autumn leave again in the spring, numbers 
remain behind to breed here, and the reported instances of nests and 
eggs being found in different counties are becoming more and more 
tA:nerous every year. — Ed. 
