100 
NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBOHNE. 
When we meet I shall be glad to have some conversation with you 
concerning the proposal you make of my drawing up an account of the 
animals in this neighbourhood. Your partiality towards my small 
abilities persuades you, I fear, that I am able to do more than is in my 
power : for it is no small undertaking for a man unsupported and alone 
to begin a natural history from his own autopsia ! Though there is 
endless room for observation in the field of nature, which is boundless, 
yet investigation (where a man endeavours to be sure of his facts) can 
make but slow progress ; and all that one could collect in many years 
would go into a very narrow compass. 
Some extracts from your ingenious " Investigations of the Difiference 
between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy," &c., have fallen 
in my way ; and gave me gre at stisfaction : they have removed the 
objections that always arose in my mind whenever I came to the 
passages which you quote. Surely the judicious Yirgil, when writing a 
didactic poem for the region of Italy, could never think of describing 
freezing rivers, unless such severity of weather pretty frequently 
occurred ! 
P.S. Swallows appear amidst snows and frost. 
LETTEE VL 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, May list, 1770. 
Deae Sie, — The 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 black-cap, the red-start, the fly-catcher. 
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 
disadvantages two swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared this 
year as early as the eleventh 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 an 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 physician to the wretches 
that work in the quicksilver mines of that district.* 
When you talked of keeping a reed-sparrow, and giving it seeds, T 
could not help wondering ; because the reed-sparrow which I mentioned 
to you {Passer arundinaceus minor Rail) is a soft-billed bird ; and 
most probably migrates hence before winter; whereas the bird 
* See note, Letter XXXI. -^"^-j 
