Is not their hum
ventriloquous like that of a turkey? Some suspect it is made by
their wings.
This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown glitters
like burnished gold. It often hangs lice a titmouse, with its back
downwards.
Yours, etc., etc.
Letter XVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, June 18, 1768.
Dear Sir,
On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It
gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still
with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to
reptiles and fishes.
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as I
could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of
dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of
animals, sometimes analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the
sexual system of plants: and the case is the same as regards some
of the fishes: as the eel, etc.
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to me
very much in the dark.
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