nsiderable as it
is, I shall relate the following incident, which, though mentioned to
have happened so many years ago, was strictly matter of fact:--As some
people were shooting in the parish of Trotton, in the county of Sussex,
they killed a duck in that dreadful winter, 1708-9, with a silver collar
about its neck, on which were engraven the arms of the king of Denmark.
This anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near
relation of mine; and to the best of my remembrance, the collar was in
the possession of the rector.

At present I do not know anybody near the seaside that will take the
trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks first come; if I
lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you more of the matter. One
thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman, that there were times in
which woodcocks were so sluggish and sleepy that they would drop again
when flushed just before the spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun
that had been fired at them; whether this strange laziness was the effect
of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say.

Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland, but also,
as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In those two last
counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to the want of warmth;
the defect in the west is rather a presumptive argument that these birds
come over to us from the continent at the narrowest passage, and do not
stroll so far westward.

Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do not dust. I
think they do; and if they do, whether they wash also.

The _Alauda pratensis_ of Ray was the poor dupe that was educating the
booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last.

Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ouzel for Mr. Tunstal
during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him one when
they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that gentleman
saw my Andalusian birds; I hope they answered your expectation. Royston,
or grey crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time with
the woodcock; they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent
reason for migration; for as they fare in the winter like their
congeners, so might they in all appearance in the summer. Was not
Tenant, when a boy, mistaken? did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, and
take it for the nest of a fieldfare?

The stock-dove, or wood-pigeo