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reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on; but farther inquiry may be made1.

A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white.

A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter: were not these the snow-flake, the Emberiza nivalis of the British Zoology? No doubt they were.

A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage,

1 This I believe to be a pretty general error among the country people in other counties also. This imaginary animal, in Suffolk, is called the mouse-hunt, from its being supposed to live on mice. To discover the truth of this report, I managed to have several of these animals brought to me; all of which I found to be the common weasel. The error I conceive partly to have arisen from this animal, like most others, appearing less than its real size, when running, and attempting to escape, a circumstance well known to the hunters in India, with respect to larger animals, as the tiger, &c.—MITFORD.

The cane is a provincial name for the female of the common weasel, which is usually one-fourth smaller than the male. Young females of the year, frequently seen during harvest, are not much larger than a fullsized field-mouse.-W. Y.

2 White, pied, and cream-coloured varieties of the rook occasionally occur. A gentleman, in the year 1816, had a young rook of a light ashcolour, most beautifully mottled all over with black, and with the quill and tail-feathers elegantly barred. This curiosity he was naturally anxious to keep: but, upon the bird moulting, all its mottled plumage vanished entirely, it became a jet black rook, and in this state was suffered to join his sable tribe as a fit companion in the fields. Hunt's British Birds (Norwich).-W. Y.

White individuals, both as varieties merely and as albinoes, occur in many birds. Instances are familiar in the sparrow, the chaffinch, the magpie, &c. and, a contradiction in terms, white blackbirds are occasionally met with. One such, captured in Northamptonshire, is now living in the logical Society's Gardens.-E. T. B.

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 food3.

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 Edicnemus1), 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.

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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 nea 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

1 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 Sylt. 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

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