́seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a person with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelmstone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex downs. The prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely.

As I rode along near the coast, I kept a very sharp lookout in the lanes and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the year, have discovered some of the summer short-winged birds of passage crowding towards the coast, in order for their departure; but it was very extraordinary that I never saw a redstart, white-throat, black-cap, uncrested wren, flycatcher, &c.; and I remember to have made the same remark in former years, as I usually come to this place annually about this time. The birds most common along the coast, at present, are the stone-chatters, whinchats, buntings, linnets, some few wheatears, titlarks, &c. Swallows and house-martens abound yet, induced to prolong their stay by this soft, still, dry season.

A land tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the house where I am now visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it first appears, in the spring, it discovers very little inclination towards food; but, in the height of summer, grows voracious; and then, as the summer declines, its appetite declines; so that, for the last six weeks in autumn, it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its favourite dish. In a neighbouring village, one was kept till, by tradition, it was supposed to be an hundred years old,- -an instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile!*

* In the library of Lambeth Palace, is the shell of a tortoise, brought there in 1623; it lived until 1730, and was killed by being carelessly exposed to the inclemency of the weather. Another, at the episcopal palace at Fulham, procured by Bishop Laud, in 1628, died in 1753. One at Peterborough was known to have lived to the extraordinary age of two hundred and twenty years!

During the hybernation of animals, a temporary stagnation or suspension of active life ensues: their temperature becomes diminished, and the circulation of the blood slower; respiration less frequent, and sometimes entirely suspended; the action of their stomach and digestive organs are also suspended; and the irritability and sensibility of the muscular and nervous powers are greatly diminished. Heat and air are the only agencies which rouse them from their death-like lethargy. Judging from the circumstance of toads, lizards, and bats, being found alive in solid rocks, and in the centre of trees, this torpidity may endure the lapse of ages, without the extinction of life. Mr Murray, in his Researches in Natural History, says, 66 a toad was found, under the coal seam, in the ironstone

LETTER XXXIX.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, October 29, 1770.

DEAR SIR,-After an ineffectual search in Linnæus, Brisson, &c. I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's hirundo hyberna in Scopoli's newly discovered hirundo rupestris, p. 167. His description of " Supra murina, subtus albida; rectrices maculâ ovali albâ in latere interno; pedes nudi, nigri; rostrum nigrum; remiges obscuriores quam pluma dorsales; rectrices remigibus concolores; cauda emarginatâ nec forcipatâ," agrees very well with the bird in question; but, when he comes to advance that it is "statura hirundinis urbicæ," and that "definitio hirundinis riparia Linnæi huic quoque convenit," he, in some measure, invalidates all he has said; at least, he shews at once that he compares them to these species merely from memory; for I have compared the birds themselves, and find they differ widely in every circumstance of shape, size, and colour. However, as you will have a specimen, I shall be glad to hear what your judgment is in the matter.

Whether my brother is forestalled in his nondescript or not, he will have the credit of first discovering that they spend their winters under the warm and sheltery shores of Gibraltar and Barbary.

Scopoli's characters of his ordines and genera are clear, just, and expressive, and much in the spirit of Linnæus. These few remarks are the result of my first perusal of Scopoli's Annus Primus.

The bane of our science is the comparing one animal to the other by memory. For want of caution in this particular, Scopoli falls into errors. He is not so full with regard to the manners of his indigenous birds as might be wished, as you justly observe: his Latin is easy, elegant, and expressive, and very superior to Kramer's.*

over which it rests, in a coal mine at Auchincruive, in Ayrshire." This fact invalidates the Huttonian theory of the primitive formation of the earth, and is in favour of the Wernerían hypothesis. - ED.

* See his Elenchus Vegetabilium et Animalium per Austriam Inferiorem, &c.

LETTER XL.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, November 26, 1770.

DEAR SIR, I was much pleased to see, among the collection of birds from Gibraltar, some of those short-winged English summer birds of passage, concerning whose departure we have made so much inquiry. Now, if these birds are found in Andalusia to migrate to and from Barbary, it may easily be supposed that those that come to us may migrate back to the continent, and spend their winters in some of the warmer parts of Europe. This is certain, that many soft-billed birds that come to Gibraltar appear there only in spring and autumn, seeming to advance in pairs towards the northward, for the sake of breeding during the summer months, and retiring in parties and broods towards the south at the decline of the year; so that the rock of Gibraltar is the great rendezvous and place of observation, from whence they take their departure each way towards Europe or Africa. It is therefore no mean discovery, I think, to find that our small short-winged summer birds of passage are to be seen, spring and autumn, on the very skirts of Europe; it is a presumptive proof of their emigrations.

Scopoli seems to me to have found the hirundo melba, (the great Gibraltar swift,) in Tyrol, without knowing it. For what is his hirundo alpina, but the aforementioned bird in other words? Says he " Omnia prioris, (meaning the swift,) sed pectus album; paulo major priore." I do not suppose this to be a new species. It is true also of the melba, that nidificat in excelsis Alpium rupibus." Vid. Annum Primum, My Sussex friend, a man of observation and good sense, but no naturalist, to whom I applied on account of the stonecurlew, (oedicnemus,) sends me the following account :-" In looking over my Naturalist's Journal for the month of April, I find the stone-curlews are first mentioned on the 17th and 18th, which date seems to me rather late. They live with us all the spring and summer, and at the beginning of autumn prepare to take leave, by getting together in flocks. They seem to me a bird of passage that may travel into some dry hilly country south of us, probably Spain, because of the abundance of sheep-walks in that country; for they spend their summers with us in such districts. This conjecture I

hazard, as I never met with any one that has seen them in England in the winter. I believe they are not fond of going near the water, but feed on earth-worms, that are common on sheep-walks and downs. They breed on fallows and layfields abounding with grey mossy flints, which much resemble their young in colour, among which they skulk and conceal themselves. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, producing in common but two at a time. There is reason to think their young run soon after they are hatched, and that the old ones do not feed them, but only lead them about at the time of feeding, which, for the most part, is in the night." Thus far my friend.

In the manners of this bird, you see, there is something very analogous to the bustard, whom it also somewhat resembles in aspect and make, and in the structure of its feet.*

For a long time I have desired my relation to look out for these birds in Andalusia; and now he writes me word that, for the first time, he saw one dead in the market, on the 3d of September.

When the oedicnemus flies, it stretches out its legs straight behind, like a heron.

LETTER XLI.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, December 20, 1770.

DEAR SIR,-The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows (passeres torquati.)

*The bustard is the largest of British birds; but we fear it is now nearly, if not entirely, extinct in this country. Some years ago, a pair of these, male and female, were kept in a garden at Norwich infirmary. The male was an extremely majestic bird, and possessed of much courage, for he feared nothing, seizing any one who approached near him by the coat. The female, on the contrary, was shy and timid. It was, however, remarkable that the male bird, on discovering even a small hawk, however high in the air, squatted down on the ground, exhibiting strong marks of fear. In 1804, a fine bustard was shot, and taken to Plymouth market, where it was purchased by a publican for a shilling, its value being unknown, whereas it would have brought three or four pounds in the London market. So completely lost was this rare wanderer, that it was rejected at the second table, in consequence of the pectoral muscles differing in colour from the other parts of the breast, which is not unusual in birds of the grouse kind. Some country gentlemen arriving at the inn the following evening, and hearing of the circumstance, desired that the princely bird might be introduced, and partook of it cold at their repast.-ED

There are, doubtless, many home internal migrations within this kingdom that want to be better understood; witness those vast flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without hardly any cocks among them.* Now, were there a due proportion of each sex, it would seem very improbable that any one district should produce such numbers of these little birds, and much more when only one half of the species appears; therefore, we may conclude, that the fringillæ cælebes, for some good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own, in which the sexes part. Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of sexes in this species of birds should be interrupted in winter; since, in many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for the continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches, see Fauna Suecica, p. 85, and Systema Naturæ, p. 318. I see every winter vast flights of hen chaffinches, but none of cocks.

Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of the British singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable one, since the matter of food is a great regulator of the actions and proceedings of the brute creation : there is but one that can be set in competition with it, and that is love. But I cannot quite acquiesce with you in one circumstance, when you advance that, "When they have thus feasted, they again separate into small parties of five or six, and get the best fare they can within a certain district, having no inducement to go in quest of fresh-turned earth." Now, if you mean that the business of congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion of wheat-sowing, to the season of barley and oats, it is not the case with us; for larks and chaffinches, and particularly linnets, flock and congregate as much in the very dead of winter as when the husbandman is busy with his ploughs and harrows.

Sure there can be no doubt but that woodcocks and fieldfares leave us in the spring, in order to cross the seas, and to retire to some districts more suitable to the purpose of breeding. That the former pair before they retire, and that

*We have already stated, in a note at page 32, that chaffinches do not always separate into flocks of male and female during winter. May not the supposed hen chaffinches, so frequently seen, be the young birds of the previous summer, and the males not having yet assumed the complete plumage, are not to be distinguished from the females?

ED.

+Fieldfares visit us in October, and leave us again about the beginning of April. Their principal food in this country is the fruit of the hawthorn, and other berries, worms, and insects. "Perfectly gregarious as the fieldfare is," says Knapp, "yet we observe every year, in some tall