104 NATURAL HISTORY 
in earnefl, he pours forth very fweet, but inward melody, and 
exprefies great variety of foft and gentle modulations, fuperior 
perhaps to thofe of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted. 
Black-caps moftly haunt orchards and gardens ; while they 
warble, their throats are wonderfully diflended. 
The fong of the redftart is fuperior, though fomewhat like that 
of the white-throat : fome birds have a few more notes than others. 
Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock 
fings from morning to night : he aftedts neighbourhoods, and 
avoids folltude, and loves to build in orchards and about houfes ; 
with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole. 
The fly-catcher is of all our fummer birds the moft mute and 
the moft familiar ; it alfo appears the laft of any. It builds in a 
vine, or a fweetbriar, againft the wall of an houfe, or in the hok 
of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often clofe to 
the poll of a door where people are going in and out all day long. 
This bird does not make the leaft pretenfion to fong, but ufes a 
little inward wailing note when it thinks it's young in danger from 
cars or other annoyances : it breeds but once, and retires early. 
Sdbonte parifli alone can and has exhibited at times more than 
half the birds that are ever feen in all Siveden; the former has pro- 
duced more than one hundred and twenty fpecies, the latter only 
two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add alfo that it has Ihewn 
near half the fpecies that were ever known in Great-Britian p. 
On a retrofpeft, I obferve that my long letter carries with it a 
quaint and magifterial air, and is very fententious ; but, when I 
recoiled that you requeued ftridure and anecdote, I hope you will 
pardon the didadic manner for the fake of the information it may 
happen to contain. 
P Snjedem^i, Great-Bri:iamsz Cp^cics. 
LETTER 
