50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



of March, and continues them through the spring and summer till 

 the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the 

 larger of these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less black. 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last 



THE CHIFF-CHAFF (Sylvia hippolais). 



Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 

 this little bird, which seems to be close by though at a hundred 

 yards distance ; and when close at your ear, is scarce any louder 

 than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with 

 insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, 

 I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whis- 

 pering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell 

 them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, 

 sculking in the thickest part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard 

 distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person 

 to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted, and then 

 it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a hundred 

 yards together, through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it would not 

 come into fair sight ; but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, 

 it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings. 

 Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his 

 account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it with the 



