CORRESPONDENCE, 
33 
after just six months’ absence. Welcome! thrice welcome, “ ye gentle tribe, 
your sports pursue.”—Wryneck ( Yunx torquilla) heard and seen, 18th.—House 
Sparrows hatched, 19th.—Starlings hatched, 20th.—Cuckoo heard and seen, 20th. 
This bird was said to have been heard by a shepherd as early as the 14th, but I 
doubted the authority. On the 20th I heard it in the evening.—The Nightingale 
heard, 21st.—Queen Wasps* flying about, 21st.—Blackbirds and Rooks hatched, 
22nd.—'Tadpoles, 22nd.—Ichneumons, Red Ants,"and the White Butterfly, seen, 
22nd.—Cowslip {Primula veris) in flower, 25th.—Early Orchis {Orchis mascula ) 
flowering, 27th.—Blackthorn ( Prunus sjoinosa) and Box-tree in flower, 28th.— 
Gooseberry and Currant-trees in full flower, 30th.—Ash-trees Do., 30th.—Hazle, 
Sycamore, Lime, Osier, and Chesnut trees, leafing. 
These are a few of my notes of Spring’s approach. I pray you insert only 
such as you may deem worthy a place in your Journal. 
The Nightingale is now in full song; putting us almost out of conceit of our 
cheerful and nearly as sweet-toned native songster, the Thrush, whose notes on a 
still morn or eve in February, when that 
“ Dark, frieze-coated, hoarse 
Teeth-chattering month 
Hath borrow’d Zephyr’s voice,” 
as oft it does, are, I think, as melodious, and more welcome, than even the 
splendid liquid tones of “ peerless Philomel.” 
A friend of mine, the other day, during a short ride of little more than seven 
miles, on the public road, heard seven of these charmers, Nightingales, singing 
right merrily; a fair sprinkling for this desert part of a county not reckoned the 
belle of England. From inquiries made amongst the bird-slaying fraternity; I 
am happy to find few, scarcely any, of these beautiful choristers are sacrificed; 
though these sons of Moloch (so well described by the Northamptonshire poet, 
who, speaking of a man with a gun, says— 
“ For his soul—tho’ he outwardly looks like a Man—* 
Is in nature a Wolf, of the Apennine clan,”) 
aim at and too often slaughter the Thrush, as he sings on the spray, ere it has 
blossomed; the beautiful, the harmless Starling, when cheerily piping to its mate; 
the wild Blackbird, whether thieving (as they term picking a few ripe cherries, 
sent by Heaven on purpose) or honestly inclined; and the lightly-skimming 
Swallow; but the “ hellish thing,” as the merciful Coleridge calls it, is done 
indiscriminately; every bird of the air is considered fair game, by all village 
* Earl Fitzwilliam spends £5 or £6 every year in the destruction of these “queen Wasps”on 
his noble domain at Wentworth House, Yorkshire, giving a shilling for every Wasp brought to 
him in March and April. His lordship considers that a great saving is effected in the end by thi& 
outlay. —Ed. 
VOL. V.— NO . XXXIV. 
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