WHEATEAR. 61 



heard that at a dinaer giveu by the Earl of Dorset to the 

 King and the Duke of York, they had eaten twenty dozen of 

 them/' 



Again (pp. 83, 8rt) '' I heare/^ writes the Earl of Dorset, 

 ^' that my old friend Mr. Dr. Burton (the Rector of Broad- 

 water) is nott at Bourne ; but understanding you to dwell 

 there, I am hopeful to procure the same friendly respects I 

 was wont to receive from him. My request is, that when 

 Wheatears are best, you would, for the short time they last, 

 now and then oblige mee with some of them. I would not 

 bee a beggar, as poore as I am, if they w-eare provisions to 

 be bought for money in these parts ; but since you are there- 

 abouts a great, if not sole master of them, I am very willing 

 to be beholdinge to you, wdth assurance that, whensoever it 

 is in my power, you shall finde me 



" Your very afliect'' friend, 

 " July 80, 1646." " Dorset." 



Fuller, in his ' Worthies ' (vol. ii. p. 382), thus describes 

 them : — " Wheatears is a bird pecuhar to this country, 

 hardly found out of it. It is so called because fattest when 

 wheat is ripe, whereon it feeds, being no bigger than a Lark, 

 which it equals in the fineness of its flesh, but far exceedeth 

 in the fatness thereof. . . . That palate man shall pass in 

 silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgement con- 

 cerning the abilities of a great lord, concluded him a man 

 of very weak parts, because he once saw him, at a great 

 feast, feed on chickens when there were Wheatears on the 

 table." Mr. Harting, in his ^ Summer Migrants,' very aptly 

 remarks ''that Wheatear is a corruption from Whitear, the 

 white around the ear being very conspicuous in spring 

 plumage of this species, or else it must be derived from the 

 season of its arrival,'' and this latter is suggested by Mr. 

 A. C. Smith, in his 'Birds of Wiltshire' (p. 152), as the 

 true origin, adding " but then I submit that it cauuot allude 



