386 SYLVlIDiE. 



Pennant in 1768, briefly but unmistakably described its 

 gestures, though the hitter had ah-eady enrolled it among 

 British birds from an example received out of Shropshire, 

 and there has since been comparatively little confusion 

 about it. White, whose words need not here be quoted, 

 justly remarked that Ray had no personal knowledge of this 

 bird, for that described by him, after a communication from 

 Mr. Ralph Johnson of Brignall, in Yorkshire, was assuredly 

 the Wood- Wren, though taken by Pennant to be the present 

 species. By other old authors it has also been almost in- 

 extricably confounded with the Tree-Pipit. It was sufficiently 

 well portrayed in the ' Planches Enluminees ' (no. 581, fig. 3), 

 but Buffon's Fauvette tachetee (Hist. Nat. Ois. v. p. 149), 

 referred to that figure, seems, like Brisson's "species of the 

 same name, to be founded on Aldrovandi's description of a 

 very different bird. Singularly enough, Montbeillard, Buf- 

 fon's colleague, gives in the same volume (p. 42) a trans- 

 lation of Pennant's earliest account, applying to the bird the 

 name of Locustellc, and remarking that it had not been 

 observed out of England. 



Unless the old birds are closely watched and seen carrying 

 materials for building or food to their young, the nest is 

 very difficult to find. Montagu, writing in 1802, mentions 

 his having found a nest, but though he was clearly the first 

 to efi'ect the discovery, he does not say in what year or where 

 it was made. Mr. R. R. Wingate of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 

 having long wished to get the eggs, in June, 1815, eyed 

 "the bird to the distant passage on the top of a whin-bush 

 by which it entered and left the nest. This he found was 

 built at the bottom of a deep narrow furrow or ditch, overhung 

 by the prickly branches of the whin, and grown over with 

 thick coarse grass, matted together year after year, to the 

 height of about two feet ; all of which he was obliged to take 

 away piece-meal before he succeeded in gaining the prize." 



The Grasshopper- Warbler is found in places of very 

 varied character. In no part of England probably was it 

 more abundant than in the great fens of the Bedford-Level 

 district, before that was drained and reclaimed, but it afiects 



