106 
NATURAL HISTOUY OF SELBOUNE. 
Primus/' of the woodcock, that nupta ad nos venit circcb cequinoctimn 
vernale ; " meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And afterwards 
he adds nidificat in paludihm alpinis : ova ponit 3 — 5." It does not 
appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria ; but he 
says, ''Avis hcec septentrionalium provinciarum cBstivo tempore incola 
est ; uhi pleruraque nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme australiores 
provincial petit ; liinc circa plenilunium mensis Octohris plerumque 
Austriam transmigrat. Tunc rursHs circd plenilunium potissimum 
mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales 
provincias reditu For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see 
"Elenchus," &c. p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the migra- 
tion of woodcocks; though little is proved concerning the place of 
breeding. 
P.S. There fell in the county of Eutland, 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 
LETTEE IX. 
TO THE SAME. 
Fyfield, near Andovee, Feh. IWi, 1772. 
Dear Sir, — You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; 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 the 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 me. Of the motions of these birds he has 
ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall ; 
during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the Straits 
from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season. 
And these vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, 
hoopoes, Oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c., and also of many of 
our soft-billed summer birds of passage ; and moreover of birds which 
never leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and kites. Old 
Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the incredible 
armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring-time traversing 
the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe. Besides the above-men- 
tioned, he remarks that the procession is swelled by whole troops of 
eagles and vultures. 
nests were at various heights from the ground, from four to thirty or forty feet, or 
upwards, mixed with old ones of the preceding year ; they were for the most part 
placed against the trunk of the spruce fir, and resembled most nearly those of the 
ring-ousel. " 
