Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/160

138 withstanding so many young are hatched daily. Sure I am that it is far otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer advances: and I saw at the time mentioned, many hundreds of young wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in the other species, may it not be owing to the dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by the leaves? Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs of woodcocks and snipes; but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be: all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. 1

I am, etc.

1 Upon examining patches of mud on which I have flushed woodcocks and snipes, I have found them riddled with small perforations, clearly made by the bills of the birds, which must have been seeking some insects or worms therein.

LETTER IV. , Feb 19th, 1770 ,—Your observation that "the cuckoo does not deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in its way, but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous, with whom to intrust its young," is perfectly new to me; and struck me so forcibly, that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to consider whether the fact was so, and what reason there was for it. When I came to recollect and inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever been seen in these parts, except in the nest of the wagtail, the hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white-throat, and the redbreast, all soft-billed insectivorous birds. The excellent Mr. Willughby mentions the nest of the Palumbus