which had been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy; and, blackening every succeeding year, it became coalblack at the end of four. Its chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food 3.

I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoopint (Arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the Arum is remarkably warm and pungent.

Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in January.

In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity: it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the Salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no Parus ; and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.

I wonder that the stone curlew (Charadrius Edicnemus*), should be mentioned by the writers as a rare

3 Mr. White has justly remarked, that food has great influence on the colour of animals. The dark colour in wild birds is a great safeguard to them against their enemies; and this is the reason that, among birds of bright plumage, the young do not assume their gay colours till the second or third year, as the cygnet, the gold and silver pheasants, &c. The remarkable change of plumage among the gull tribe, is a curious and intricate subject. Is the circumstance mentioned by Mr. Pegge true, "that butterflies partake of the colour of the flowers they feed on?" I think not. See Anonymiana, p. 469.—Mitford.

bird: it abounds in all the campaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be classed, as they are by Mr. Ray, among birds, “circa aquas versantes;" for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep-walks, far removed from water; what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs.

I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnæus perhaps would call the species Mus

minimus.

LETTER XVI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR,

SELBORNE, April 18, 1768. THE history of the stone curlew (Charadrius Edicnemus) is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field; so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c. and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they sculk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our gray spotted

With the exception of Dr. Latham and Pennant, every ornithologist, until the time of M. Temminck, appears to have adhered to the mode of considering the stone curlew which is here objected to: they have universally classed it, with Linnæus, among the plovers. Dr. Latham placed it among the bustards, retaining for it the very appropriate name of thick-kneed. M. Temminck regards it as occupying a station intermediate between the plovers and the bustards. The name of curlew refers of course to a resemblance of colour merely, and by no means implies any near approximation in form to the Numenii.-E. T. B.

flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round; of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Edicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnipfields.

I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow wrens: two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the third1. No two birds can

Mr. White clearly distinguishes three species of these little birds; and he seems to have had some idea of a fourth: but on this point there is a confusion in the entries in the Naturalist's Calendar, which has perhaps arisen from his having used different names for the same bird in noting down his observations in different years. The small uncrested wren of the calendar, appearing on the 9th of March, is called in the Natural History, p. 84, the chirper, and is said to have black legs: it must be either Sylvia rufa or Sylv. loquax; I believe the former, for I doubt the fact of Sylv. loquax, the chiffchaff, which seems not to reach the north of England, arriving so early. The third entry in the Calendar, second willow or laughing wren, is certainly Sylv. Trochilus; because he says in the Natural History, p. 82, that the songster has a laughing note. The fourth entry, large shivering wren, is unquestionably Sylv. Sylvicola. It appears to me that the second and fifth entries, middle yellow wren, and middle willow wren, mean the same thing as second willow wren, and refer alike to Sylv. Trochilus: but it is possible that, at a later period than the date of Letter XIX. written in 1768, he may have suspected the existence of a fourth species.

There has existed very great confusion in the works of British and continental ornithologists concerning these nearly allied species, which I am now enabled to clear up, by the examination of a considerable number killed in this country, compared with continental specimens of Sylr. rufa, and the bird called Sylv. Hippolais, or pouillot, by M. Temminck. In the former edition of these notes I stated that I had never had in hand the Sylv. Hippolais of M. Temminck, which I then understood to be the monotonous wren or chingching, and acknowledged as an inhabitant of this country in the summer time. It now appears that the Hippolais of Temminck is not ascertained to have been ever seen in Great Britain: and it becomes necessary to inquire, what is the bird to which the name

differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has

Hippolais belongs by priority of appellation, and whether it be or not a British species.

The name Hippolais appears to have originated with Linnæus in his Fauna Suecica. In his description he states that the bird to which he gave it is perhaps the female of his Motacilla Curruca, the lesser white throat; that its body is ash-coloured above, ashy white underneath, its throat white, its wings, when closed, ferruginous above, and the outer margins of its quills ferruginous. Without entering into a further detail of his description (Fauna Suecica, p. 90), I may assume that what I have quoted is sufficient to show that no one of the five birds above mentioned is the Motacilla Hippolais of Linnæus, because no one of them agrees with these particulars. It is quite apparent that Motacilla (or Sylvia, which is a generic name of later introduction) Hippolais belongs to the fruiteating group of birds, and is closely allied to Sylvia Curruca (more properly called Curruca Silviella), if indeed it be not that identical species in a particular state of plumage. The name was first applied to a British bird by Dr. Latham in 1783, with a note that he was indebted for the account of it to the Rev. Mr. Lightfoot; and it is not clear that he himself ever saw the bird described by him as Mot. Hippolais or lesser pettychaps. The particulars given by him do not agree with any one of the five wrens above mentioned, and appear to be an amalgamation of Linnæus's description with that which he had received from Mr. Lightfoot; but as it is clear that no one of the wrens found in England, nor the continental bird of M. Temminck, admitting the possibility of its coming here occasionally, is entitled to Linnæus's name Hippolais, it is quite unnecessary to conjecture what Mr. Lightfoot's bird was.

In the former edition of these notes I pointed out the chiff chaff as overlooked by continental, and confounded with the bird supposed to be Hippolais by English, writers, and I described it minutely, and named it Sylv. loquax. I am now, by means of specimens kindly communicated to me by Mr. Bennett, enabled to clear up the confusion in which these birds have been so long involved. It is quite clear that Sylv. rufa is an English bird, and that Sylv. loquax has been confounded with it, both here and abroad, though very different. In Shaw's Zoology, the name Hippolais has been applied to the chiff chaff, as it has also been in the later works of Mr. Selby and the Rev. L. Jenyns, the name rufa being given in the last of these as synonymous with it; but all these applications are erroneous. I have now before me four species killed in this country. The first is Sylv. sylvicola of Montagu, the wood wren; it is the Sylv. sibilatrix of Bechstein, whose name must give place to that of Montagu, published many years before with an accurate description of the species. The second is Sylv. Trochilus. These two species are well known, and no mistake can arise concerning them. In Sylv. sylvicola the first quill, which is diminutive in all the species, is almost obsolete, the second shorter than the third, and scarcely shorter than the fourth; the prolongation of the third being greater in some specimens than in others. In

G

a joyous, easy laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three

Sylv. Trochilus the second is equal to the sixth, and shorter than the three intermediate. In the foreign specimen of Sylv. rufa, a male bird, and in that killed in England, the second is equal to the eighth, and shorter than all the intermediate. In Sylv. loquax, the chiff chaff, now before me, the second is longer than the seventh, and shorter than the four intermediate; and this exactly agrees with Mr. Sweet's bird, from which I made the description in the former edition, after its death. It was a male bird; whence it appears that the difference is not that of sex, but of species. In my former description, it should be remarked, I did not count the obsolete quill, and my first was properly the second.

The chiff chaff is not plentiful in this country, unless perhaps in some particular situations, which I have not visited. I never have seen one in Yorkshire, and, though particularly watchful for it in the south of England, it is six or seven years since I have seen one alive.

The bird which I supposed (as it now appears, erroneously, never having been willing to kill these harmless creatures) to be the pouillot or Hippolais of M. Temminck, I have seen sitting on the summit of an oak tree at the time of its leafing, and reiterating its monotonous note ching ching; and it has been pointed out to me at such moments by Mr. Sweet, as being one of the allied wrens. In the Faune Françoise of Vieillot, I find a Sylv. Collybita; to which he quotes as synonymous, Motacilla rufa, LINN., and rufous warbler, LATH., having improperly substituted a new name for one which must not be changed, although rufous is but ill warranted by a little reddish tint on the flanks. He subjoins as vulgar names, compteur d'argent and chofti; and states that it often sits on the summits of trees, where the male utters its note, which has obtained it in Normandy the name of money-counter. He continues to say that the note of this bird has appeared to himself to express tip tap repeated several times. It is, I think, quite clear, that the bird which is called, on account of its note uttered on the top of a high tree, money-counter or money-changer, is that which I have heard in such a situation, uttering its unvaried ching or chink chink. The chiff chaff does not sit on the summit of a tree, but is in perpetual motion, distinctly articulating chiff chaff, chivvy chaffy; and it is equally clear that such notes could never have suggested the idea of chinking money, but they are the sounds which Mr. Vieillot has not very accurately represented by tip tap. It must be recollected, that to convey to a Frenchman the sound we give to chiff or chaff, the letter t must be prefixed. It thus appears that two different birds have been confounded under the name Sylv. Collybita, newly introduced by Vieillot, and that of Mot. rufa of Linnæus, on the continent, as they have been here: that Sylvia rufa is the ching ching, and that the chiff chaff had never had any scientific name appropriated to it, till I designated it as Sylv. loquax, except the improper application of the names Hippolais and rufa to it. Sylv. rufa is rather larger than Sylv. loquax, its wing measuring four inches and seven-eighths, while that of loquax is only four inches and a half long: besides the rufous tinge on its flanks,