90 THE SALICABIA. 



account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it 

 is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in 

 Kay's Letters : see p. 74. He also procured me a grass- 

 hopper-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 plausi- 

 ble 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 America from the western 

 coast of Africa, and the south of Europe ; and then break 

 down the isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this 

 is making use of a violent piece of machinery : it is a diffi- 

 culty worthy of the interposition of a god ! " Incredulus 

 odi" "Disbelieving I detest." 



and willows, often in the currant bushes in gardens near a wet ditch or stream. 

 The reed-wren builds in general higher, sometimes in a poplar tree, often in 

 the tall lilacs in the Regent's Park : our books mostly state willows, and that it 

 builds in the reeds, but it often prefers a tall bush or a small tree if there be 

 one in the neighbourhood. Its bill is stronger than that of the sedge- 

 warbler, and it seems to be less patient of cold. Its nest is deeper. The 

 song of individuals of the two species is very similar, and cannot easily be 

 distinguished. Mr. White calls the sedge-warbler a delicate polyglott ; and 

 speaks of its song as very superior to that of the whitethroat, in which I can 

 by no means agree with him. Its notes are very hurried, some parts of its 

 song are good, but others singularly harsh and disagreeable. They are greedy 

 birds, and in confinement are apt to die from excessive fat ; becoming so 

 unwieldy as to hurt and bruise themselves by tumbling down W. H. 



