iOO 
NATURAL HISTORY 
Speaking of the fivift,^ that page fays " it's drink the dezv;" 
whereas it Hiould be *' it drinks on the wing;" for all the fwallovv 
kind fip their water as they fweep over the face of pools or rivers : 
like llrgiTs bees, they drink flying; " jiumina fumma libant'^ la 
this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. 
Of the fedge-bird ^ be pleafed to fay it lings moft part of the 
night ; it's notes are hurrying, but not unpleafing, and imitative 
of feveral birds ; as the fparrow, fwallow, fky-lark. When it hap- 
pens to be filent in the night, by throwing a flone or clod into the 
bullies where it fits you immediately fet it a fmging ; or in other 
words, though it flumbers fometimes_, yet as foon as it is awakenr- 
ed it realTumes it's fong. 
LETTER XL. 
TO THE SAME. 
DEAR SIR, Seleorne, Sept. a, 1774. 
Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been 
remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female 
fwallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; fo that there 
was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli : and be- 
fides, as they were then always in pairs, and bufied in the employ 
of nidification, there could be no room for miftaking the fexes, 
nor the individuals of different chimnies the one for the other. 
From all my obfervations, it conftantly appeared that each fex 
' p. 15. p. 16. 
has 
