I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the champaign 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 called, as they are by Mr Ray, "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 shew you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnæus, perhaps, would call the species mus minimus.

LETTER XVI.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, April 18, 1768.

DEAR SIR,- The history of the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, 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 The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c. and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our grey spotted 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 shew 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. Oedicnemus 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 turnip fields.

I make no doubt but there are three species of the willowwrens ;* two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to

These are the wood-wren, s. sibilatrix, the hay bird, s. trochilus, and the chiff-chaff, s. hippolais, the latter of which generally appears in this country in the end of April. Mr Sweet says, the chiff-chaff soon becomes familiar in confinement; so much so, that one he captured took a fly out of his hand in three or four days, and "learnt to drink milk out

procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note, the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drachms and a half, while the latter weighs but two; so that the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the spring and summer, till the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured; of the less, black.

The grasshopper lark began his sibilous note in my fields last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by, though at an hundred yards' distance; and, when close at your ear, is scarcely any louder than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse before us for an hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns; yet it would not come into fair sight; but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping, and shivering with its wings. Mr Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr Johnston, who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray's Philosophical Letters, p. 108.

The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared: it usually breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing its note is

of a tea-spoon, of which it was so fond, that it would fly after it all round the room, and perch on the hand that held it, without shewing the least symptoms of fear; it would fly up to the ceiling, and bring down a fly in its mouth every time. At last it got so tame, that it would sit on my knee at the fire, and sleep."-ED.

*The grasshopper warbler, sylvia locustella of Latham. It is quite distinct in habits and character from the lark genus; it is destitute of the long claw behind; it resides in thickets, and is incapable of running on the ground like a lark; its progressive movement consists of hopping. It frequents low and damp situations.--ED.

short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the pease, cherries, currants, &c. and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.

A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

LINN EI NOMINA.
Motacilla trochilus.
Yunx torquilla.
Hirundo rustica.

Hirundo urbica.
Hirundo riparia.
Cuculus canorus,
Motacilla luscinia.
Motacilla atricapilla.
Motacilla sylvia.

Motacilla trochilus.
Hirundo apus.

Charadrius oedicnemus?
Turtur aldrovandi? +

Alauda trivialis.

Rallus crex.

Motacilla trochilus.

Motacilla phoenicurus.
Caprimulgus europaus.
Muscicapa grisola.

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta europea (the nuthatch.) Mr Ray says,

*Bechstein says the song of the redstart, sylvia phœnicurus, is lively and agreeable. "One which had built its nest under my house," says he, "imitated very exactly the note of a chaffinch I had in a cage in the window; and my neighbour had another in his garden, which repeated all the notes of the fauvette."

It arrives in this country early in April, and quits us again in the end of September; an instance is, however, recorded, in LOUDON'S Magazine, of a female having been seen on the cliff called Dumpton Stairs, in the Isle of Thanet, on Christmas day, 1830.—En.

† Our author, in placing a note of interrogation after this species, seems to doubt its being one of our migratory birds. The turtle dove, Columba turtur, of Linnæus, is common enough in the southern counties of England; arriving in the end of April or beginning of May, and departing in September. It has lately been met with as far north as Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Bewick mentions a flock of them which visited

that the less spotted woodpecker does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong or more.*

Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion; there is no distinction of genus, species, or sex.

In breeding time, snipes play over the moors, piping and humming; they always hum as they are descending. Is not their hum ventriloquous, like that of the turkey? Some suspect that it is made by their wings. †

This morning, I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown

Prestwick Car, near Newcastle, in 1794; and Selby has one, which was shot at North Sunderland, in 1818.

Under the craw of the turtle dove, are placed glands, which secrete a lacteal fluid, probably common to all the genus. - ED.

* A nuthatch, which had been accidentally winged by a sportsman, was kept in a small cage of plain oak wood and wire. During a night and a day in which he was in captivity, his tapping labour was incessant; and after occupying his prison for that short time, he left the wood-work pierced and worn like worm-eaten timber. He manifested extreme impatience at his situation; he was unremitting in his endeavours to effect his escape, and in these efforts exhibited much intelligence and cunning. He was fierce, fearlessly bold, and eat voraciously of food which was placed before him. At the close of the third day, he sank under the combined effects of vexation, assiduous labour, and voracious appetite. This nuthatch was peculiarly laborious under his confinement, and pecked in a manner different from all other birds; "grasping hard with his immense feet, he turned upon them as upon a pivot, and struck with the whole weight of his body." §

Mr Bree informs us, that having caught a nuthatch in the common brick trap used by boys, he was struck with the singular appearance of its bill. It was so obliquely obtuse at the point, that it had the appearance of being cut off, which he had no doubt was produced by its efforts to escape. No persecution will force this bold little bird from its nest during incubation. It defends with determined courage; strikes the intruder with its bill and wings, making all the while a loud hissing noise, and will allow itself to be taken in the hand rather than yield. — ED.

†The sound proceeds from the throat, and not the wings. Montagu says, "in the breeding season the snipe changes its note entirely from that it makes in winter. The male will keep on the wing for an hour together, mounting like a lark, uttering a shrill piping noise; it then descends with great velocity, making a bleating sound, not unlike an old goat, which is repeated alternately round the spot possessed by the female, especially while she is sitting on her nest."-ED.

§ Mag. of Nat. Hist. i. p. 228; ii. 243

glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs, like a titmouse, with its back downwards. *

LETTER XVII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, June 18, 1768.

DEAR SIR,-On Wednesday last, arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to reptiles and fishes.

The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of animals something analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants; and the case is the same with regard to some of the fishes,—as the eel, &c.+

This elegant little species is the smallest of British birds; its weight seldom exceeds eighty grains. This minute bird braves the severest winter of our climates. Two remarkable instances of its being migra tory are recorded by Selby. He says, on the 24th and 25th October, 1822, "after a very heavy gale and thick fog from the north-west, thousands of these birds were seen to arrive upon the sea shore and sandbanks of the Northumbrian coast."

"A more extraordinary circumstance in the economy of this bird took place during the same winter, viz. the total disappearance of the whole tribe, natives as well as strangers, throughout Scotland and the north of England. This happened towards the conclusion of the month of January, 1823, and a few days previous to the long continued snow-storm, so severely felt through the northern counties of England, and along the eastern parts of Scotland. The range and point of this migration are unascertained, but it must probably have been a distant one, from the fact, that not a single pair returned to breed or pair the succeeding summer, in the situations they had been known always to frequent: nor was one of the species to be seen till the following October." * .ED.

+ Many absurd opinions have prevailed regarding the propagation of eels, such as their originating from the hairs of the mane and tail of horses thrown into rivers, with various other theories equally unfounded. These have arisen from the circumstance that the roe of the eel does not present the same appearance as that of other fishes. On this intricate subject Mr Couch makes the following observations: "The generation of eels has been involved in extraordinary obscurity, notwithstanding the attention which eminent naturalists have paid to the subject. I have no doubt that the pearly substance which lies along the course of the spine *Wernerian Memoirs, v. p. 397.