TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, which I have great reason to think is the pettichaps it is common in some parts of the kingdom; and I have received formerly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white-throat, but has a more white, or rather silvery, breast and belly; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and mown walks.

One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me, that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight o'clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house-swallows, thirty at least, he supposes, perching on a willow that hung over the verge of James

the grand operas, at which I was present, during several carnivals, and compare them with those which I now experience, on returning from the performance of a piece I have not witnessed for some time, I am fully convinced that nothing acts so powerfully on my mind as all species of music, and particularly the sound of female voices, and of contralto. Nothing excites more various or terrific sensations in my mind. Thus the plots of the greatest number of my tragedies were either formed while listening to music, or a few hours afterwards." In a subsequent passage he remarks, "My greatest pleasure consisted in attending the opera buffa, though the gay and lively music left a deep and melancholy impression on my mind. A thousand gloomy and mournful ideas assailed my imagination, in which I delighted to indulge by wandering alone on the shores of the Chiaja Portici.

Associations of ideas, awakened by music, have also a powerful effect upon the sensitive mind. The following quotation from the London Magazine strikingly illustrates this fact: " "I knew, at Paris, the widow of an Irish patriot, who could not hear the Exile of Erin' sung without being overpowered to such a degree, that it would have been truly alarming, had not a flood of tears come to her relief. What is wonderful, so far from having a fine musical ear, she had not even a common-place relish for music. The same effect was produced on her by the Minstrel Boy' of Moore. A young friend of the writer, who has no taste for music, is similarly overpowered, even in a crowded theatre, when Home, sweet Home,' is sung."- ED.

Knight's upper pond. His attention was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight, pressing down the twig, so that it nearly touched the water. In this situation, he watched them till he could see no longer. Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to suspect, that house-swallows have some strong attachment to water, independent of the matter of food; and, though they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and rivers during the uncomfortable months of winter.

One of the keepers of Wolmer Forest sent me a peregrine falcon, which he shot on the verge of that district, as it was devouring a wood-pigeon. The falco peregrinus, or haggard falcon, is a noble species of hawk, seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter 1767, one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Faringdon, and sent by me to Mr Pennant into North Wales.* Since that time, I have met with none till now. The specimen mentioned above was in fine preservation, and not injured by the shot: it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing, and twenty-one from beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and a half standing weight. This species is very robust, and wonderfully formed for rapine; its breast was plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick, and brawny; and its legs remarkably short and well set; the feet were armed with most formidable, sharp, long talons; the eyelids and cere of the bill were yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was thick and hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near the end of the upper mandible on each side; its tail, or train, was short in proportion to the bulk of its body; yet the wings, when closed, did not extend to the end of the train. From its large and fair proportions, it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was not permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of prey, which are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were many barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the woodpigeon, on which it was feeding when shot: for voracious birds do not eat grain; but, when devouring their quarry, with undistinguishing vehemence, swallow bones and feathers, and all matters, indiscriminately.† This falcon was probably driven * See Letters X. XI. to Thomas Pennant, Esq.

The bones and feathers which are swallowed along with the flesh by birds of prey, tend to assist digestion. — ED.

from the mountains of North Wales or Scotland, where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep snows that had lately fallen.

LETTER CII.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. •

My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East India Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese breed from Canton; such as are fattened in that country for the purpose of being eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow colour, with coarse bristling hair on their backs; sharp, upright ears, and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. Their hind legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock, or ham, to such a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot. When they are in motion, their tails are curved high over their backs, like those of some hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside, from the tip midway, that does not seem to be matter of accident, but somewhat singular. Their eyes are jet black, small, and piercing; the insides of their lips and mouths of the same colour, and their tongues blue. The bitch has a dew-claw on each hind leg; the dog has none. When taken out into a field, the bitch shewed some disposition for hunting, and dwelt on the scent of a covey of partridges till she sprung them, giving her tongue all the time. The dogs in South America are dumb; * but these bark much in a short, thick manner, like foxes; and have a surly, savage demeanour, like their ancestors, which are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they are fed for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food. These dogs, having been taken on board as soon as weaned, could not learn much from their dam; yet they did not relish flesh when they came to England. In the islands of the Pacific Ocean, the dogs are bred up on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when offered them by our circumnavigators.

We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright, fox-like ears; and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so graceful, are the effect of choice breeding and

The dogs which Captain Franklin brought from the Arctic Regions were dumb, and are never known to bark in their native country; but a young one, that was whelped here, has learnt to imitate his fellows.-ED.

cultivation. Thus in the Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China, the dogs which draw the Tartars on snow sledges near the river Oby, are engraved with prick-ears, like those from Canton. The Kamtschatdales also train the same sort of sharp-eared, peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges; as may be seen in an elegant print engraved for Captain Cook's last voyage round the world.

Now we are upon the subject of dogs, it may not be impertinent to add, that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and pheasants, as it were, by instinct, and with much delight and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones when offered as food; nor will a mongrel dog of my own, though he is remarkable for finding that sort of game. But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter clean.

No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent, and trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.*

Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they are not disposed to hunt, is no wonder ; but why they reject and do not care to eat their natural game, is not so easily accounted for, since the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should be eaten. Dogs, again, will not devour the more rancid water-fowls; nor indeed the bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the fetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage; and indeed there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike; for vultures, † and kites, and ravens, and crows, &c. were intended to be messmates with dogs over their carrion; and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers, to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.

* Pointers are frequently known to set game the first time they are taken into a field, and to preserve their point with the steadiness of an old well-trained dog.-ED.

Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes, that the dogs and vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse, as to bring up their young together in the same place.

The Chinese word for a dog, to a European ear, sounds like quihloh.

STONE-CURLEW- ROOKS.

263

LETTER CIII.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest, is not yet all exhausted; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oakhanger to a carpenter of this village: this was the butt end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from the ground by an ax, was very ponderous, and as black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet work, by inlaying it along with whiter woods.

Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and repeating often a short quick note. This bird I have remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured now, that it is the stone-curlew, (charadrius oedicnemus.) Some of them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and Northfield, away down towards Dorton; where, among the streams and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be noisy; their notes, often repeated, become signals, or watch-words, to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each other in the dark.

The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk, they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne-down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl, who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on