8o NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



of that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincolnshire. My 

 bird I describe thus : " It is a size less than the grasshopper-lark ; 

 the head, back, and coverts of the wings, of a dusky brown, 

 without those dark spots of the grasshopper-lark ; over each eye 

 is a milk-white stroke; the chin and throat are white, and the 

 under parts of a yellowish white ; the rump is tawny, and the 

 feathers of the tail sharp-pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, 

 and the legs are dusky ; the hinder claw long and crooked." 

 The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed-sparrow 

 that he took it for one ; and that it sings all night : but this 

 account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a 

 second sort of locustela, hinted ^at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters : 

 see p. 1 08. He also procured me a grasshopper-lark. 



The question that you put with regard to those genera of 

 animals that are peculiar to America, viz., how they came there, 

 and whence? is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so 

 obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks 

 into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. 

 Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support 

 whatever theory they shall choose to maintain; but then the 

 misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, 

 since they are all founded on conjecture. The late writers of 

 this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that 

 have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western 

 coast of Africa and the south of Europe ; and then break down 

 the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making 

 use of a violent piece of machinery ; it is a difficulty worthy of 

 the interposition of a god ! ' { Incredulus odi" 



