WILLOW-LARK. 



LETTEE XIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Aug. 17, 1768, 

 Deae Sie, — I have now, past dispute, made out three dis- 

 tinct species of the willow- wrens (^notacillae trochili) , which 

 constantly and invariably use distinct notes.* But, at the 

 same time, I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of 

 your willow-lark.t 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 aU 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 con- 

 siderably the largest, and has its quiU 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-hke noise now and then, at 

 short intervals, shivering a httle with its wings when it 

 sings ; and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cris- 

 tatus of Eay ; which he says, " cantat voce striduld locustcB^X 

 Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were 

 three species. 



* These birds are accurately described and beautifully figured in Mr. 

 Selby's and Mr. Yarrell's works on British birds, to which the reader ii 

 wferred. — Ed. 



t Pennant's Brit. ZooL, edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381. 

 X Without doubt, sylvia nbilatriXf or wood-wren. — W. J. 



