living birds from all quarters of the world. After I had studied over
the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that came
from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of Guinea, etc.,
were thick-billed birds of the loxia and fringilla genera; and no
motacillae, or muscicapae, were to be met with. When I came to
consider, the reason was obvious enough; for the hard-billed birds
subsist on seeds, which are easily carried on board; while the
soft-billed birds, which are supported by worms and insects, or, what
is a succedaneum for them, fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in
long and tedious voyages. It is from this defect of food that our
collections (curious as they are) are defective, and we are deprived of
some of the most delicate and lively genera.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Sept. 14, 1770.
Dear Sir,
You saw, I find, the ring-ousels again among their native crags; and
are farther assured that they continue resident in those cold regions
the whole year. From whence, then, do our ring-ousels migrate so
regularly every September, and make their appearance again, as if in
their return, every April? They are more early this year than common,
for some were seen at the usual hill on the fourth of this month.
An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they frequent some
parts of Dartmoor, and breed there; but leave those haunts about the
end of September or beginning of October, and return again about the
end of March.
Another intelligent person assures me that they breed in great
abundance all over the Peak of Derby, and are called there tor-ousels;
withdraw in October and November, and return in spring. This
information seems to throw some light on my new migration.
Scopoli’s* new work (which I have just procured) has its merits in
ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol and Carniola. Monographers,
come from whence they may, have, I think, fair presence to challenge
some regard and approbation from the lovers of natural history; for, as
no man can alone investigate all the works of nature, these partial
writers may, each in their department, be more accurate in their
discoveries, and freer from errors, than more general writers; and so
by degrees may pave the way to an universal correct natural history.
Not that Scopoli is so circumstantial and attentive to the life and
conversation of his birds as I could wish: he advances some false
facts; as when he says of the hirundo urbica that ‘pullos extra nidum
non nutrit.’ This assertion I know to be wrong from repeated
observations this summer, for house-martins do feed their young flying,
though it must be acknowledged not so commonly as the house-swallow;
and the feat is done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to
indifferent observers. He also advances some (I was going to say)
improbable facts; as when he says of the woodcock that, ‘pullos rostra
portat fugiens ab hoste.’ But candour forbids me to say absolutely that
any fact is false, because I have never been witness to such a fact. I
have only to remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is
perhaps the worst adapted of any among the winged creation for such a
feat of natural affection.
* Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXII
T Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, October 29, 1770.
Dear Sir,
After an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Brisson, etc., I begin to
suspect that I discern my brother’s hirundo hyberna in Scopoli’s new
discovered hirundo rupestris, p. 167. His description of ‘Supra murina,
subtus albida; rectrices macula ovali alba in latere inferno; pedes
nudi, nigri; rostrum nigrum; remiges obscuriores quam plumae dorsales;
rectrices remigibus concolores; cauda emarginata, nec forcipata,’
agrees very well with the bird in question; but when he comes to
advance that it is ‘statura hirundinis urbicae,’ and that ‘definitio
hirundinis ripariae Linnaei huic quoque convenit,’ he in some measure
invalidates all he has said; at least he shows 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 Linnaeus. 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.*
* See his Elenchus vegerabilium et animalium per Austriam inferiorem,
etc.
I am pleased to see that my description of the moose corresponds so
well with yours.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 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 Tirol, without knowing it. For what is his hirundo
alpina but the afore-mentioned 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 stone curlew,
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 seventeenth and eighteenth, 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 have 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 lay-fields
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 3rd of September.
When the oedicnemus flies it stretches out its legs straight behind,
like an heron.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 30, 1771.
Dear Sir,
There is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, which is
very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the summer, getting
into people’s skins, especially those of women and children, and
raising tumours which itch intolerably. This animal (which we call an
harvest-bug) is very minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye; of a
bright scarlet colour, and of the genus of Acarus. They are to to be
met with in gardens on kidney-beans, or any legumens; but prevail only
in the hot months of summer. Warreners, as some have assured me, are
much infested by them on chalky downs; where these insects swarm
sometimes to so infinite a degree as to discolour their nets, and to
give them a reddish cast, while the men are so bitten as to be thrown
into fevers.
There is a small long shining fly in these parts very troublesome to
the housewife, by getting into the chimneys, and laying its eggs in the
bacon while it is drying: these eggs produce maggots called jumpers,
which, harbouring in the gammons and best parts of the hogs, eat down
to the bone, and make great waste. This fly I suspect to be a variety
of the musca putris of Linnaeus: it is to be seen in the summer in the
farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and about the mantelpieces, and on the
ceilings.
The insect that infests turnips and many crops in the garden
(destroying often whole fields while in their seedling leaves) is an
animal that wants to be better known. The country people here call it
the turnip-fly and black dolphin; but I know it to be one of the
coleoptera; the ‘chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, femoribus posficis
crassissimis.’ In very hot summers they abound to an amazing degree,
and as you walk in a field or in a garden, make a pattering like rain,
by jumping on the leaves of the turnips or cabbages.
There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every ploughboy; which,
because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed over by late writers,
and that is the curvicauda of old Moufet, mentioned by Derham in his
Physico-theology, p. 250: an insect worthy of remark for depositing its
eggs as it flies in so dexterous a manner on the single hairs of the
legs and flanks of grass-horses. But then Derham is mistaken when he
advances that this oestrus is the parent of that wonderful star-tailed
maggot which he mentions afterwards; for more modern entomologists have
discovered that singular production to be derived from the egg of the
musca chamaeleon: see Geoffrey, t. 17, f. 4.
A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, and
house, suggesting all the known and likely means of destroying them,
would be allowed by the public to be a most useful and important work.
What knowledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be
collected; great improvements would soon follow of course. A knowledge
of the properties, oeconomy, propagation, and in short of the life and
conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to some
method of preventing their depredations.
As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend entomology more than
some neat plates that should well express the generic distinctions of
insects according to Linnaeus; for I am well assured that many people
would study insects, could they set out with a more adequate notion of
those distinctions that can be conveyed at first by words alone.
Letter XXXV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, 1771.
Dear Sir,
Happening to make a visit to my neighbour’s peacocks, I could not help
observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by no means
to be their tails; those long feathers growing not from their
uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff
feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real
tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and
top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of
the bird before but its head and neck, but this would not be the case
were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the
turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular
vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers
clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick
with their feet, and run backwards towards the females.
I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus aegogropila,
taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about
the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat.
Letter XXXVI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Sept. 1771.
Dear Sir,
The summer through I have seen but two of that large species of bat
which I call vespertilio altivolans, from its manner of feeding high in
the air: I procured one of them, and found it to be a male; and made no
doubt, as they accompanied together, that the other was a female: but,
happening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I was
somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of the same sex.
This circumstance, and the great scarcity of this sort, at least in
these parts, occasions some suspicions in my mind whether it is really
a species, or whether it may not be the male part of the more known
species, one of which may supply many females; as is known to be the
case in sheep, and some other quadrupeds. But this doubt can only be
cleared by a farther examination, and some attention to the sex, of
more specimens: all that I know at present is, that my two were amply
furnished with the parts of generation, much resembling those of a
boar.
In the extent of their wings they measured fourteen inches and an half,
and four inches and an half from the nose to the tip of the tail; their
heads were large, their nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad and
muscular, and their whole bodies fleshy and plump. Nothing could be
more sleek and soft than their fur, which was of a bright chestnut
colour; their maws were full of food, but so macerated that the quality
could not be distinguished; their livers, kidneys, and hearts were
large, and their bowels covered with fat. They weighed each, when
entire, full one ounce and one drachm. Within the ear there was
somewhat of a peculiar structure that I did not understand perfectly;
but refer it to the observation of the curious anatomist. These
creatures send forth a vary rancid and offensive smell.
Letter XXXVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, 1771.
Dear Sir,
On the twelfth of July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the
motions of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a
large oak that swarmed with scarabaei solstitiales, or fern-chafers.
The powers of its wing were wonderful, exceeding, if possible, the
various evolutions and quick turns of the swallow genus. But the
circumstance that pleased me most was that I saw it distinctly, more
than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of
the head, deliver somewhat into its mouth. If it takes any part of its
prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it
does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe,
which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw.
Swallows and martins, the bulk of them, I mean, have forsaken us sooner
this year than usual; for, on September the twenty-second, they
rendezvoused in a neighbour’s walnut-tree, where it seemed probable
they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day,
which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers,
occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the
hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable distance: since that no
flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.
Some swifts staid late, till the twenty-second of August —a rare
instance! for they usually withdraw within the first week.*
* See Letter LIII to Mr. Barrington.
On September the twenty-fourth three or four ring-ousels appeared in my
fields for the first time this season: how punctual are these visitors
in their autumns and spring migrations!
Letter XXXVIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 15, 1773.
Dear Sir,
By my journal for last autumn it appears that the house-martins bred
very late, and staid very late in these parts; for, on the first of
October, I saw young martins in their nests nearly fledged; and again,
on the twenty-first of October, we had at the next house a nest full of
young martins just ready to fly; and the old ones were hawking for
insects with great alertness. The next morning the brood forsook their
nest, and were flying round the village. From this day I never saw one
of the swallow kind till November the third; when twenty, or perhaps
thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by the side of the
hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak birds, some of
which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift their quarters at this late
season of the year to the other side of the northern tropic? Or rather,
is it not more probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep
covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern
naturalist would say), may become their hybernaculum, and afford them a
ready and obvious retreat?
We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week.
Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at
Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this
county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal,
and not extended to the continent southward, if they do at first come
at all from the northern parts of this island only, and not from the
north of Europe. Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the
fearless disregard that they show for men or guns, that they have been
little accustomed to places of much resort. Navigators mention that in
the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds are so
little acquainted with the human form that they settle on men’s
shoulders; and have no more dread of a sailor than they would have of a
goat that was grazing. A young man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that
about seven years ago ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the
autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one afternoon: he added
farther, that some had appeared since in every autumn; but he could not
find that any had been observed before the season in which he shot so
many. I myself have found these birds in little parties in the autumn
cantoned all along the Sussex-downs, wherever there were shrubs and
bushes, from Chichester to Lewes; particularly in the autumn of 1770.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 9, 1773.
Dear Sir,
As you desire me to send you such observations as may occur, I take the
liberty of making the following remarks, that you may, according as you
think me right or wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in your
intended new edition of the British Zoology.
The osprey was shot about a year ago at Frinshampond, a great lake, at
about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a
plough and devouring a fish: it used to precipitate itself into the
water, and so take its prey by surprise.
A great ash-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted-park,
and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne: they are rarae aves in this
country.
Crows go in pairs the whole year round.
Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy-head and on all the cliffs
of the Sussex coast.
The common wild-pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the
south of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; is
usually the latest winter bird of passage. Before our beechen woods
were so much destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for
a mile together as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us
early in spring; where do they breed?
The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird the storm-cock,
because it sings early in the spring in blowing showery weather; its
song often commences with the year: with us it builds much in orchards.
A gentleman assures me that he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on
Dartmoor: they build in banks on the sides of streams.
Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they
play and toy about on the wing; and particularly while they are
descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground.
Adamson’s testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence that
European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal: he does not
talk at all like an ornithologist; and probably saw only the swallows
of that country, which I know build within Governor O’Hara’s hall
against the roof. Had he known European swallows, would he not have
mentioned the species ?
The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it flies: this
species appears commonly about a week before the house-martin, and
about ten or twelve days before the swift.
In 1772 there were young house-martins in their nest till October the
twenty-third.
The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the
house-swallow: viz., about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of April.
Whin-chats and stone-chattel stay with us the whole year.
Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through.
Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter.
Bullfinches, when fed on hempseed, often become wholly black.
We have vast flocks of female chaffinches all the winter, with hardly
any males among them.
When you say that in breeding-time the cock-snipes make a bleating
noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should have rather said an humming),
I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about
on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths: but
whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the
motion of their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this
noise happens the bird is always descending, and his wings are
violently agitated.
Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and,
leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and
sheep-walks.
Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt,
but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from
Alresford, where there is a great lake: it was kept a while, but died.
I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmerforest in the
beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks.
Speaking of the swift, that page says ‘its drink the dew’; whereas it
should be ‘it drinks on the wing’; for all the swallow kind sip their
water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil’s
bees, they drink flying, ‘flumina summa libant.’ In this method of
drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.
Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of the night;
its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several
birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent
in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits
you immediately set it a-singing; or in other words, though it slumbers
sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song.
Letter XL
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774.
Dear Sir,