84 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



where there is covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The 

 country people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings 

 incessantly night and day during the breeding-time, imitating the 

 note of a sparrow, a swallow, a skylark ; and has a strange hurry- 

 ing manner in its song. My specimens correspond most minutely 

 to the description of your fen salicaria shot near Revesby. 

 Mr. Ray has given an excellent characteristic of it when he says, 

 "Rostrum et pedes in hoc avicula multo majores snnt qudm pro 

 corporis rationed See letter, May 29th, 1769. (Preceding letter, 

 xxiv.) 



I have got you the egg of an cedicnemus, or stone-curlew, which 

 was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground ; there were two, 

 but the finder inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he 

 saw them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had not 

 forgot to mention the faculty that snakes have of stinking se 

 defendendo. I knew a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which 

 was in its person as sweet as any animal while in good humour 

 and unalarmed ; but as soon as a stranger, or a dog or cat, came 

 in, it fell to hissing, and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia 

 as rendered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of 

 Ray's " Synop. Quadr." is an innocuous and sweet animal ; but, 

 when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a most 

 pestilent and fetid smell and excrement, that nothing can be more 

 horrible. 



A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the lanius minor 

 cinerascens cum macula in scapulis alba> Rail ; which is a bird 

 that, at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of 

 <; British Zoology," I find you had not seen. You have described 

 it well from Edwards's drawing. 



NOTE TO LETTER XXV. 



1 The bird referred to is the sedge-warbler. White says it sings like a reed- 

 sparrow. The reed -sparrow has no song, but the reed-wren or reed- warbler 

 ha s, and White must mean this species by the term reed-sparrow. 



