[ 263 I 
quantities of them in a country fo cultivated as Eng- - 
Hand is ; for the feeds in meadows are deltroyed by 
mowing; inpaftures, bv the bite of the cattle j and 
in arable, by the plough, when moil of them are 
buried too deep for the biid to reach them *. 
I know well that the finging of the cock-bird in 
the fpring is attributed by . many t to the motive 
only of pleafmg its. mate during incubation. 
Thole, however, who fuppofe this, fliuuld re- 
coiled:, that much the greater part of birds do not 
fing at all: why fhould their mate therefore be 
deprived of this folace and amufement? 
The bird in a cage, which, perhaps, fingsnine or 
ten months in a year, cannot do fo from this induce- 
ment i and, on the contrary, it arifes chiefly from 
contending with another bird, or indeed againfi: al- 
moft any fort of continued noife. 
Superiority in fong gives to birds a moll amazing 
afcendency over each other ; as is well known to the 
bird-catchers by the fafcinating power of their call- 
birds, which they - contrive fhould moult prematurely 
for this purpofe. 
But, to fhew deciflvely that the finging of a bird 
in the fpring does not arife from any attention to its 
mate, a very experienced catcher of nightingales hath 
informed me, that fome of thefe birds ha vq jerked' 
the inftant they were caught. He hath alfo brought . 
* The plough indeed may turn up fome few feeds, which may 
ftill be in an eatable ftate. 
+ See, amongft others, M. de BufFon, in his lately-publiflied j 
Ornithology, 
fO ) 
