Letter V
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 12, 1770.
Dear Sir,
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
yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any
other; but the woodlark, the wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the
white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted
instances of the truth of what I advance.
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
birdcatcher; 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.
Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept in a cage, the thick-billed
reed-sparrow of the Zoology, p. 320; or was it the less reed-
sparrow of Ray, the sedge-bird of Mr. Pennant's last publication, p.
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