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.

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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 pri"oris" (meaning the swift); " sed pectus al"bum; paulo major priore." I do not sup pose 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, oedicnémus, 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 seven"teenth and eighteenth, which date seems " to me rather late. They live with us all "the Spring and Summer, and at the begin

ning 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

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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;

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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 third of September.

When the oedicnemus flies it stretches out its legs straight behind, like an heron. I am, &c.

LETTER XXXIV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR;

SELBORNE, March 30, 1771.

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 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 chimnies, 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 Linnæus it is to be seen in the Summer in farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and about the mantle pieces, 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, salta"toria, femoribus posticis 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