74 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
characteristic of it when he says, “ Rostrum et pedes in hic aviculd 
multd majores sunt quam pro corporis ratione.” See letter, May 
29, 1769. (Preceding letter, XXIV.) 
I have got you the egg of an @dicnemus, 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 stinking se defendendo. 
I knew a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which 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 effluvia as rendered it hardly 
supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray’s “Synop. Quadr.” 
is an innocuous and sweet animal ; but, when pressed hard by dogs 
and men, it can eject such a most pestilent and fetid smell and 
excrement, that nothing can be more horrible. 
WOODCHAT. 
A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the danzus minor 
cinerascens cum macula in scapulis albé, Raii;* which is a bird 
that, at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of 
“ British Zoology,” I find you had not seen. You have described it 
well from Edwards’s drawing. 
* This is the Lanius rufus, or woodchat of British authors, and is extremely rare as a 
British bird, resting upon the authority of a few straggling specimens being procured. 
