MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 139 
nium potissimum mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta 
ad septentrionales provincias redit.'' For the whole passage 
Cwhich I have abridged) see Elenclius, &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 Hon DAINES BARRINGTON. 
DEAR SIR, Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771- 
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 
thdse birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks toge- 
ther, both spring and fall : during which periods m^Tiads of the 
swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, and from 
south to north, according to the season. And these vast migra- 
tions consist not only of hirundines, but of bee-birds,t hoopoes, 
oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c. and also of many of 
our soft-billed summer-birds of passage ; and moreoA^er 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 ac- 
count 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 mentioned, he remarks that the 
procession is swelled by whole trooj^s of eagles and vultures. 
* See note to page 277- — Ed. 
t Tee bee-eater {merops vulgaris) i a most beautiful bird, but extremely rare visitant to th« 
British islands, is here intended. Two or three of our summer birds are confused in same parte 
of the country under the name of "bee-bird." — F,d. 
