NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 135 
partridges, and pheasants, &c., are pulveratrices, such as dust them- 
selves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding 
themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds 
that dust themselves never wash; and I once thought that those 
birds that wash themselves would never dust ; but here I find myself 
mistaken ; for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, 
being frequently seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and 
yet they are great washers. Does not the skylark dust ? * 
Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method 
of purification from these pulveratrices ? because I find from tra- 
vellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a 
sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips 
off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over with sand 
or dust. 
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the 
nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the 
little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found 
that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark ; it was 
become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 
a ec a ee in tenui re 
Majores pennas nido extendisse 
anu was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased 
it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its 
wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a 
distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing 
the greatest solicitude. 
In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond; and 
found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 
Libellule, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they 
settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Not- 
withstanding what Linnzus says, I cannot be induced to believe 
that they are birds of prey. 
This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard_of at 
Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks 
(Loxie curvirostre) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves 
belonging to this house ; the water-ousel is said to haunt the mouth 
of the Lewes river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish chough 
builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore. 
I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my 
* The skylark does dust. 
