98 THE SALICARIA REPTILES. 



dead, and have procured several specimens ; and am 

 perfectly persuaded myself (and trust you will soon 

 be convinced of the same) that it is no more nor 

 less than the passer arundinaceus minor of Ray *. 

 This bird, by some means or other, seems to be 

 entirely omitted in the British Zoology ; and one 

 reason probably was, because it is so strangely classed 

 by Ray, who ranges it among his pici affines. It 

 ought, no doubt, to have gone among his aviculte 

 caudd unicolore, and among your slender-billed small 

 birds of the same division. Linnseus might, with 

 great propriety, have put it into his genus of mota- 

 cilla ; and the motacilla salicaria of his fauna suecica 

 seems to come the nearest to it. It is no uncommon 

 bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers, 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 hurrying 

 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 cha- 

 racteristic of it when he says, Rostrum et pedes in Me 

 aviculd multb majores sunt quam pro corporis ratione. 

 The beak and feet of this bird are too large for the 

 proportions of the rest of the body. 



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 in self-defence. I knew a gentle- 

 man who kept a tame snake, which was in its person 



* See Letter XXIV. p. 82. 



