a yellowish white; the rump is
tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed; the bill is dusky and
sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked." The
person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed sparrow that he took
it for one; and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther
inquiry. For my part I suspect it is a second sort of _locustela_,
hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He also procured
me a grasshopper-lark.

The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are
peculiar to America, viz., how they came there, and whence? is too
puzzling for me to answer, and yet so obvious as often to have struck me
with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that subject, little
satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance
plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to
maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as
good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late
writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that
have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of
Africa and the south of Europe, and then break down the Isthmus that
bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent piece of
machinery; it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god!
"_Incredulus odi_."

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.
THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK.

--equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium.

VIRG. _Georg_.

When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing:
Amusive birds!--say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head:
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,
The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide!

While deep'ning shades obs