No doubt the reason why the sex of birds in their first plumage is so difficult to be distinguished is, as you say, 'because they are not to pair and discharge their parental functions till the ensuing spring.' As colours seem to be the chief external sexual distinction in many birds, these colours do not take place till sexual attachments begin to obtain. And the case is the same in quadrupeds; among whom, in their younger days, the sexes differ but little: but, as they advance to maturity, horns and shaggy manes, beards and brawny necks, etc., etc., strongly discriminate the male from the female. We may instance still farther in our own species, where a beard and stronger features are usually characteristic of the male sex: but this sexual diversity does not take place in earlier life; for a beautiful youth shall be so like a beautiful girl that the difference shall not be discernible:
Quem si puellarum insereres choro, Mire sagaces falleret hospites Discrimen obscurum, solutis Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu.--HOR.
Letter VII
To The Honourable Daines BarringtonRingmer, near Lewes, Oct. 8, 1770.
Dear Sir,I am glad to hear that Kuckalm is to furnish you with the birds of Jamaica; a sight of the hirundines of that hot and distant island would be great entertainment to me.
The Anni of Scopoli are now in my possession; and I have read the Annus Primus with satisfaction: for though some parts of this work are exceptionable, and he may advance some mistaken observations; yet the ornithology of so distant a country as Carniola is very curious. Men that undertake only one district are much more likely to advance natural knowledge than those that grasp at more than they can possibly be acquainted with: every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer.
The reason perhaps why he mentions nothing of Ray's Ornithology may be the extreme poverty and distance of his country, into which the works of our great naturalist may have never yet found their way. You have doubts, I know, whether this Ornithology is genuine, and really the work of Scopoli: as to myself, I think Idiscover strong tokens of authenticity; the style corresponds with that of his Entomology: and his characters of his Ordines and Genera are many of them new, expressive, and masterly. He has ventured to alter some of the Linnaean genera with sufficient show of reason.
It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many swifts and no swallows at Staines; because, in my long observations of those birds, I never could discover the least degree of rivalry or hostility between the species.
Ray remarks that birds of the gallinae order, as cocks and hens, partridges, and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that dust themselves never wash: and I once thought that those birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequency seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers. Does not the skylark dust?
Query.--Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method of purification from these pulveratrices? because I find from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over with sand or dust.
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground; and that it was fed by the little bird. Iwent to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing... in tenui re Majores pennas nido extendisse ...
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude.
In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond; and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the libellulae, or dragon-flies; some of which they caught as they settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing.
Notwithstanding what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe that they are birds of prey.
This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks (loxiae curvirostrae) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging to this house; the water-ousel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore.
I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my newly-discovered migrators) scattered, at intervals, all along the Sussex-downs from Chichester to Lewes. Let them come from whence they will, it looks very auspicious that they are cantoned along the coast in order to pass the channel when severe weather advances.
They visit us again in April, as it should seem, in their return; and are not to be found in the dead of winter. It is remarkable that they are very tame, and seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a person with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelmstone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex-downs: the prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely!
