84 BBITISH BIRDS 



A smaE warbler, closely resembling the grasshopper warbler in 

 its language and habits, and once an indigenous British species, is 

 Locust ella luscinio'idea, locally known as the reelbird, red night- 

 reeler, and red craking night-wren, and in books as Savi's warbler, 

 after its discoverer. It bred regularly in the Norfolk Broads and the 

 fen districts in Lincolnshire down to about 1849, when it became 

 extinct. 



Hedge-Sparrow. 



Accentor modularis. 



Fig. 31. — Hedge- Spabrow. ^ natural size. 



Crown ash-colour with brown streaks ; side of neck, throat, and 

 breast bluish grey ; back and wings reddish brown streaked with dark 

 brown ; breast and belly buffy white. Length, five and a half inches. 



Most people know that a sparrow is a hard-billed bird of the 

 finch family, and that the subject of this notice is not a sparrow, 

 except in name. It is, in fact, a soft-billed bird belonging to that 

 large and musical family which includes the nightingale, the red- 

 breast, and the warblers. * How absurd, then, to go on calling it a 

 sparrow I ' certain ornithologists have said from time to time, and 

 have re-named it the hedge-accentor. But, as Professor Newton 

 has said in his addition to Yarrell's account of the bird, a name 

 which has been part and parcel of our language for centuries, and 

 which Shakespeare used, 'is hardly to be dropped, even at the bidding 

 of the wisest, so long as the English tongue lasts.' Now, as the 



