alry and defiance; are shy and wild in
breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting lonely lanes and
commons; nay, even the very tops of the Sussex Downs, where there are
bushes and covert, but in July and August they bring their broods into
gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the summer fruits.

The blackcap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe; yet
that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are desultory; but
when that bird sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours forth
very sweet but inward melody, and expresses great variety of soft and
gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the
nightingale excepted.

Blackcaps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they warble their
throats are wonderfully distended.

The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that of the
whitethroat; some birds have a few more notes than others. Sitting very
placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock sings from
morning to night. He affects neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and
loves to build in orchards and about houses; with us he perches on the
vane of a tall maypole.

The fly-catcher is, of all our summer birds, the most mute and the most
familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, or a
sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on
the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where
people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make the
least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it
thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances; it breeds but
once, and retires early.

Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than half the
birds that are ever seen in all Sweden; the former has produced more than
one hundred and twenty species, the latter only two hundred and
twenty-one. Let me add, also, that it has shown near half the species
that were ever known in Great Britain.

On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint
and magisterial air, and is very sententious; but when I recollect that
you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic
manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain.

LETTER XLI.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of
soft-billed birds that continue with us the wi