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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 113 
amidst all these disadvantages two swallows, as I mentioned in 
my last, appeared this year as early as the rrth April amidst 
frost and snow; but they withdrew again for a time. 
I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little 
satisfied with Scopoli’s new publication; there is room to 
expect great things from the hands of that man, who is a good 
naturalist: and one would think that a history of the birds of 
so distant and southern a region as Carniola would be new and 
interesting. I could wish to see the work, and hope to get it 
sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches that work 
in the quicksilver mines of that district. 
When you talked of keeping a reed-sparrow, and giving it 
seeds, I could not help wondering; because the reed-sparrow 
which I mentioned to you is a soft-billed bird; and most prob- 
ably migrates hence before winter; whereas the bird you kept 
abides all the year and is a thick-billed bird. I question whether 
the latter be much of a songster; but in this matter I want to 
be better informed. The former has a variety of hurrying notes, 
and sings all night. Some part of the song of the former, I 
suspect, is attributed to the latter. We have plenty of the 
soft-billed sort; which Mr. Pennant had entirely left out of his 
British Zoology, till 1 reminded him of his omission. 
I have somewhat to advance on the different manners in 
which different birds fly and walk; but as this is a subject 
that I have not enough considered, and is of such a nature as 
not to be contained in a small space, I shall say nothing further 
about it at present. 
No doubt the reason why the sex of birds in their first 
plumage is so difficult to be distinguished is, as you say, 
«Ph onthe -—« 
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“because they are not to pair and discharge their parental 
functions till the ensuing spring.” As colors seem to be the 
chief external sexual distinction in many birds, these colors do 
not take place till sexual attachments begin to obtain. And the 
case is the same in quadrupeds; among whom, in their younger 
