OF SELBORNE. 14.1 
At prefent I do not know any body near the fea-fide that will 
take the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks 
firft come : if I lived near the fea myfelf I would foon tell you 
more of the matter. One thing I ufed to obferve when I was a 
fportfman, that there were times in which woodcocks were fo 
fluggifh and fleepy that they would drop again when flufhed juft 
before the fpaniels, nay juft at the muzzle of a gun that had been 
fired at them : whether this ftrange lazinefs was the efFedl of a recent 
fatiguing journey I fhall not prefume to fay. 
Nightingales not only never reach Nortkumherland and Scotland^ 
but alfo, as I have been always told, DevonJJoire and Cornwall. In 
thofe two laft counties we cannot attribute the failure of them tO' 
the want of warmth : the defe£l in the weft is rather a prefumptive 
argument that thefe birds come over to us from the continent at t):e 
narrowcft paflage, and do not ftroU fo far weftward. 
Let me hear from your own obfcrvation whether fkylarks do not 
duft. I think they do : and if they do, whether they wafh alfo. 
The alauda pratenfn ofRaywdLS the poor dupe that was educating 
the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of O£iober laft. 
Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-oufel for Mr, 
I'unjtal d\ix\x\g their autumnal viiit ; but I will endeavour to get him 
one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that 
gentleman faw my Andalufian birds ; I hope they anfwered your ex- 
pedation. Rov/Ion, or grey crows, are winter birds that come mucli 
about the fame time with the woodcock : they, like the fieldfare 
and redwing, have no apparent reafon for migration ; for as they 
fare in the winter like their congeners, fo might they in all appear- 
ance in the fummer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, miftaken ? did 
he not find a miffel-thruih's neft, and take it for the neft of a 
fieldfare ? 
The 
