SANDPIPER. 75 



siderably the largest, and has its quill feathers and 

 secondary feathers tipped with white, which the 

 others have not. This last haunts only the tops of 

 trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous 

 grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short inter- 

 vals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings ; 

 and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cris- 

 tatus of Ray; which he says, " cantat voce stridula 

 locust^."* Yet this great ornithologist never sus- 

 pected that there were three species. 



LETTER XX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, October 8, 1768. 



IT is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany ; all 

 nature is so full, that that district produces the 

 greatest variety which is the most examined. Several 

 birds, which are said to belong to the north only, 

 are, it seems, often in the south. I have discovered 

 this summer three species of birds with us, which 

 writers mention as only to be seen in the northern 

 counties. The first that was brought me (on the 

 14th of May) was the sandpiper (tringa hypoleucus :) 

 it was a cock bird, and haunted the banks of some 

 ponds near the village ; and, as it had a companion, 

 doubtless intended to have bred near that water. 

 Besides, the owner has told me since, that, on recol- 

 lection, he has seen some of the same birds round 

 his ponds in former summers.! 



* Without doubt, sylvia sibilatrix, or wood-wren. W. J. 

 f This species, the totanus hypoleucus of modern ornitho- 

 logists, is most abundant on all the rocky brooks in the north 



