, or
fern-owl; you were, I find, acquainted with the bird before.

When we meet I shall be glad to have some conversation with you
concerning the proposal you make of my drawing up an account of the
animals in this neighbourhood. Your partiality towards my small
abilities persuades you, I fear, that I am able to do more than is in my
power: for it is no small undertaking for a man unsupported and alone to
begin a natural history from his own autopsia! Though there is endless
room for observation in the field of nature, which is boundless, yet
investigation (where a man endeavours to be sure of his facts) can make
but slow progress; and all that one could collect in many years would go
into a very narrow compass.

Some extracts from your ingenious "Investigations of the Difference
between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy," etc., have fallen
in my way, and gave me great satisfaction: they have removed the
objections that always arose in my mind whenever I came to the passages
which you quote. Surely the judicious Virgil, when writing a didactic
poem for the region of Italy, could never think of describing freezing
rivers, unless such severity of weather pretty frequently occurred!

P.S.--Swallows appear amidst snows and frost.

LETTER VI.

SELBORNE, _May 21st_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--The severity and turbulence of last month so interrupted the
regular process of summer migration, that some of the birds do but just
begin to show themselves, and others are apparently thinner than usual;
as the white-throat, the black-cap, the red-start, the fly-catcher. I
well remember that after the very severe spring in the year 1739-40,
summer birds of passage were very scarce. They come probably hither with
a south-east wind, or when it blows between those points: but in that
unfavourable year the winds blowed the whole spring and summer through
from the opposite quarters. And yet amidst all these disadvantages two
swallows, as I mentioned in my last, appeared this year as early as the
11th April amidst frost and snow; but they withdrew again for a time.

I am not pleased to find that some people seem so little satisfied with
Scopoli's new publication; there is room to expect great things from the
hands of that man, who is a good naturalist: and one would think that a
history of the birds of so distant and southern a region as Carniola
would be new and interesting.