THE SALICAIUA. KEPTILES. 97 



I have taken a gi'eat deal of pains about your salicaria and 

 mine, with a Avhite stroke over its eye, and a tawny rump. 

 I have surveyed it alive and dead, and have procured several 

 specimens ; and am perfectly persuaded myself (and trust 

 you will soon be con\dnced of the same) that it is no more 

 nor less than the passer ariincUnaceus oninor of Ray.* This 

 bird, by some means or other, seems to be entirely omitted 

 in the British Zoology; and one reason probably was, 

 because it is so strangely classed by Eay, who ranges it 

 among his pici affines. It ought, no doubt, to have gone 

 among his aviciilce cmidd unicolore, and among your slender- 

 billed small birds of the same division. Linnaeus might, 

 with great propriety, have jDut it into his genus o^ motaciUa; 

 and the inotaciUa salicaria of his fauna siiecica seems to come 

 the nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the 

 sides of ponds and rivers, where there is covert, and the 

 reeds and sedges of moors. The country people in some 

 places call it the sedge-Urd. It sings incessantly, night and 

 day, during the breeding time, imitating the note of a 

 sparrow, a swallow, a skylark ; and has a strange hurrying 

 manner in its song. My specimens correspond most 

 minutely to the description of your fen salicaria shot near 

 Eevesby. Mr. Eay has given an excellent characteristic of 

 it when he says, JRostrum et pedes in Jidc aviculd midto 

 majores sunt quam pro corporis ratione. The beak and feet 

 of this bird are too large for the proportions of the rest of 

 the body. 



I have got you the e^g of an oedicnemus, or stone curlew, 

 which was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground : there 

 were two ^ but the finder inadvertently crushed one with 

 his foot before he saw them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had 

 not forgot to mention the faculty that snakes have of stink- 

 ing in self-dei'ence. I knew a gentleman who kept a tame 

 snake, wliich was in its person as sweet as any animal, while 

 in good humour and unalarmed ; but, as soon as a stranger, 

 or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled the 

 room with such nauseous efiluvia, as rendered it hardly sup- 

 portable. T^hus the squnck, or stonck, of Eay's Sgnop 



• See Letter xxiv. p. 82. 



