I1O THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 
“* Nought is useless made ; 
On the barren heath 
The shepherd tends his flock that daily crop 
Their verdant dinner from the mossy turf 
Sufficient: after them the cackling goose, 
Close-grazer, finds wherewith to ease her want.’ 
PHILIPS’s Cyder.”| 
LETTER V. 
SELBORNE, Afri rath, 1770. 
I heard many birds of several species sing last year after 
midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not 
the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The 
yellow-hammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any 
other; but the woodlark, the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, 
the white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all 
undoubted instances of the truth of what I advanced. 
If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of the 
summer migrations, the black-cap will be here in two or three 
days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one of those 
songsters; but I am no bird-catcher: and so little used to 
birds in a cage, that I fear if I had one it would soon die for 
want of skill in-feeding. 
As to the matter of long-billed birds growing fatter in 
moderate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what should be 
the reason. ‘The thriving at those times appears to me to arise 
altogether from the gentle check which the cold throws upon 
insensible perspiration. ‘The case is just the same with black- 
birds, etc.; and farmers and warreners observe, the first that 
their hogs fat more kindly at such times, and the latter that 
their rabbits are never in such good case as in a gentle frost. 
But when frosts are severe, and of long continuance, the case 
eS ”!lU CU ee 
