16?
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 blackbirds, etc.; and
farmers and warreners observe, the first, that their hogs fat more
kindly at such times, and the latter that the rabbits are never in such
good case as in a gentle frost. But when frosts are severe, and of
long continuance, the case is soon altered; for then a want of food
soon overbalances the repletion occasioned by a checked
perspiration. I have observed, moreover, that some human
constitutions are more inclined to plumpness in winter than in
summer.
When birds come to suffer by severe frost, I find that the first that
fail and die are the redwing-fieldfares, and then the song-thrushes.
You wonder, with good reason, that the hedge-sparrows, etc., can
be induced to sit at all on the egg of the cuckoo without being
scandalized at the vast disproportioned size of the supposititious
egg; but the brute creation, I suppose, have very little idea of size,
colour, or number.
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