.124 NATURAL HISTORY 
It was not In my power to procure you a black-cap, or a lefs 
reed-fparrow, or fedge-bird, alive. As the firft is undoubtedly, 
and the laft, as far as I can yet fee, a funimer bird of paflage, 
they would require more nice and curious management in a cage 
than I Ihould be able to give them : they are both diftinguifhed 
fongfters. The note of the former has fuch a wild fweetncfs that 
it always brings to my mind thofe lines in a fong in " Js I'hi Like It'" 
" And tune his merry note 
" Unto the iviU bird's throat." Shakespeare. 
The latter has a furprifing variety of notes refembling the fong 
of feveral other birds ; but then it has alfo an hurrying manner, 
not at all to it's advantage : it is notwithftanding a delicate 
polyglot. 
It is new to me that titlarks in cages fing in the night ; perhaps 
only caged birds do fo. I once knew a tame redbreaft in a cage 
that always fang as long as candles were in the room ; but in their 
wild ftate no one fuppofes they fmg in the night. 
I fhould be almoft ready to doubt the fadl, that there are to be 
ieen much fewer birds in J/^'/vthan in any former month, notwith- 
ftanding fo many young are hatched daily. Sure I am that it is 
far otherwife Avith reipedt to the fivallozv tribe, which increafes 
prodigioufly as the fummer advances : and i faw, at the time men- 
tioned, many hundreds of young wagtails on the banks of the 
Cberzvcll, which almoft covered the meadows. If the matter ap- 
pears as you fay in the other fpecies, may it not be owing to the 
dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed 
by the leaver ? 
Many 
