It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from my childhood.

As to swallows (Hirundines rusticce) being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (Hirundines apodes] among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead; hut, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, ho put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.

Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Susses, a great fragment of the chalk-cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative, but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urlicee) were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once; for I see by my Fauna of last year, that broods came forth so late as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration ? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty-ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October.

How strange is it that tho swift, which seems to live exactly the same life as the swallow and house- martin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably ! ^: while the latter stay often to the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. The martins and redwing fieldfares 'were flying in sight together—an uncommon assemblage of winter birds !

A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the Alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps-of the Motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the top of tall woods.

The Stoparola of Ray (for which wo have as yet no name in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the flycatcher. There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.

I perceive there are more than one species of the Motor-cilia, trochilus: Mr. Derham supposes,in Ray's "Philosophical Letters," that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name.

Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the blackcap (Motacilla atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not; I think there is no doubt of it, for in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping all at once into these parts, but are never seen in the winter.  They are delicate songsters.

Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.

I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they aro plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more; and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it be a nondescript species or not.