146 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBURNE. 



great pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovelling and wallowing 

 in dusty roads ; and yet they are great washers. Does not the 

 skylark dust? 



Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method 

 of Durification from these pulveratrices ? because I find from tra- 

 vellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a. 

 sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he 

 strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over 

 with sand or dust. 



A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the 

 nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the 

 little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and 

 found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark ; 

 it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 



in tenui re 



Majores pennas nido extendisse . . 



and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 

 teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting 

 with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at 

 a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing 

 the greatest solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; 

 and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 

 Libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they 

 settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Not- 

 withstanding what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe 

 that they are birds of prey. 



This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at 

 Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks 

 (Loxice curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves 

 belonging to this house; the water-ousel is said to haunt the 

 mouth of the Lewes river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish 

 chough builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex 

 shore. 



I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my 

 newly discovered migraters) scattered, at intervals, all along the 



