90 THE SALICARIA. 



salicaria, which, at first, I suspected might have 

 proved your willow-lark,* but on a nicer examina- 

 tion, it answered much better to the description of 

 that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincoln- 

 shire. My bird I describe thus ; " It is a size less 

 than the grasshopper-lark ; the head, back, and co- 

 verts of the wings, of a dusky brown, without the 

 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."f 

 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 in- 

 quiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of 

 locust ella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters : 

 see p. 74. 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 



* For this salicaria, see Letter XXVI. p. 98. 

 f Sylvia phragmites. Bechst. Sedge-warbler. SELBY'S 

 Ornith.W. J. 



