62 \VILLOW-WBEN. 



server, unless lie catches the eye of the young bird, may be 

 eluded. The eggs are short and round, of a dirty white, 

 spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be 

 able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could 

 show you them almost any day ; and any evening you may 

 hear them round the village ; for they make a clamour which 

 may be heard a mile. (Edicnemus is a most apt and ex- 

 pressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like 

 those of a gouty man. After harvest, I have shot them 

 before the pointers in turnip fields. 



I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow- 

 wrens ; two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet 

 to procure the third.* No two birds can differ more in their 

 notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am 

 acquainted with ; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing 

 note, the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every 

 way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs 

 two drachms and a half, while the latter weighs but two ; 

 so that the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. 

 The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage that is 

 heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his notes 

 in the middle of March, and continues them through the 

 spring and summer, till the end of August, as appears by 



* Mr. White clearly distinguishes three species of these little hirds ; and 

 he seems to have had some idea of a fourth : but on this point there is a con- 

 fusion in the entries in the Naturalist's Calendar, which has perhaps arisen 

 from his having used different names for the same bird in noting down 

 his observations in different years. The small uncrested wren of the 

 calendar, appearing on the 9th of March, is called in the Natural History, 

 p. 84, the chirper, and is said to have black legs : it must be either sylvia 

 rufa or sylv. loquax ; I believe the former, for I doubt the fact of sylv. 

 loquax, the chiffchafF, which seems not to reach the north of England, 

 arriving so early. The third entry in the Calendar, second willow or laughing 

 wren, is certainly sylv. troctdlus ; because he says in the Natural History, 

 p. 82, that the songster has a laughing note. The fourth entry, large shivering 

 wren, is unquestionably sylv. sylvicola. It appears to me that the second 

 and fifth entries, middle yellow wren, and middle willow wren, mean the same 

 thing as second willow wren, and refer alike to sylv. trochilus ; but 

 it is possible that at a later period than the date of Letter xix. written in 

 1768, he may have suspected the existence of a fourth species. TV. H. 



There has hitherto existed very great confusion in the works of British and 

 foreign naturalists concerning the four nearly allied species of wrens, which 

 Mr. W. Herbert has satisfactorily cleared up in his very elaborate note on the 

 subject, printed in Bennett's edition. ED. 



