description: "The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance; its back is mottled with

irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins; a black line runs from each eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind is small; its dorsal fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus: the tail fin is broad, and square at the end. From the breadth and muscular strength of the tail, it appears to be an active, nimble fish."

The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of any gills, for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh air. It is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within which we keep it in water, and wandering away; and people every

summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing in colour; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have

not.

.

LETTER XIX.

Selborne August 17, 1768.

DEAR SIR, I HAVE now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the willow-wrens (motacilla trochili), which constantly and invariably use dis. tinct notes. But, at the same time, I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark.* In my letter of April the 18th, I had told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then; but, when I came to procure it, it proved in all respects a very motacilla trochilus, only that it is a size larger than the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before me, and can discern that there are three grada. tions of sizes, and that the least has black legs, and the other two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous, grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its

* Brit. Zool., edit, 1776, 8vo, p. 381.

wings when it sings; and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says, "cantat voce stridulâ locusta." Yet this great or. nithologist never suspected that there were three species.

LETTER XX.

Selborne, October 8, 1768.

Sev

Ir is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany; all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. eral birds, which are said to belong to the north only, are, it seems, often in the south. I have discovered this summer three species of birds with us which writers mention as only to be seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th of May) was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus; it was a cock bird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village; and, as it had a companion, doubtless intended to have built near that water. Besides, the owner has told me since, that, on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers.

The next bird that I procured (on the 21st of May) was a male red-backed butcher-bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it, says that it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries and chattering of the whitethroats and other small birds drawn his attention to the bush where it was; its craw was filled with the legs and wings of beetles.

The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were some RINGOUSELS (turdi torquati).

This week twelvemonth, a gentleman from Lon don, being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries, some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks: a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed the same; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767 (you, however, paid but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these birds myself); but last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens; and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed these birds again last spring, about Lady Day, as it were, on their return to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe, and may retire before the exces sive rigour of the frosts in those parts, and return to lay their eggs in spring, when the cold abates. If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, concerning whose migrations the writers are silent; but if these birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the southern coun

ties. The ousel is larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries: in the spring it feeds on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April.

I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study of reptiles) that my people every now and then, of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is sixty-three feet deep, a large black warty LIZARD, with a fin-tail

and yellow belly. How they first came down at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am able to say.

My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions; and I hope Mr. may find reason to give his decision in my favour; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation.

As yet I am not quite done with my history of the adicnemus, or stone curlew; for I shall desire