80 
NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 
playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with 
their mouths : but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, 
or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say ; but this I 
know, that when this noise happens the bird is always descending, and 
his wings are violently agitated. 
Soon after the lapwings * have done breeding they congregate, and, 
leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep- 
walks. 
Two years ago + last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, 
but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, 
where there is a great lake : it was kept awhile, but died. 
I saw young teals J taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the 
beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks. 
Speaking of the swift, § 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 Yirgil's bees, 
they drink flying ; "Jiumina summa Ubant." In this method of 
drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 
Of the sedge-bird |1 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, skylark. When it happens to be silent 
in the night, by throwing 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 reassumes its song. 
LETTEE XL. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selbob.ne, Sept. 2nd, 1774. 
Dear Sir, — Before 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 pulli : and besides, 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 
diff*erent 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 difi^erence, 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 helpless, 
make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a snapping or cracking, 
pursuing people along the hedges as they walk : these last sounds seem 
intended for menace and defiance. 
The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of summer.^ 
* p. 360.' t p/409. t P- 4^5. § p. 15. |1 p. 16. 
Salicaria locustetla, see Letter XVI. 
