XT.] OF SELBORNE. 48 



animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual 

 food. 



I had remarked for years that the root of the cuckoo-pint 

 (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, 

 and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some 

 exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found 

 it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the 

 arum is remarkably warm and pungent. 



Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. 

 The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by 

 that fierce weather in January. 



In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a 

 little bird that raised my curiosity ; it was of that yellow-green 

 colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and I think was soft- 

 billed. It was no pans ; and was too long and too big for the 

 golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow- 

 wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never 

 continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it 

 was so desultory that I missed my aim. 



I wonder that the stone curlew, Charadrius oedicnemm, should 

 be mentioned by writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all 

 the campaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I 

 think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in 

 the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. 

 They cannot, I think, with any propriety be called, as they are 

 by Mr. Ray, dwellers about streams or ponds, circa aquas 

 versantes ; for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most 

 dry, open, upland fields and sheep walks, far removed from water ; 

 what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their 

 usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs. 



I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Lin- 

 neeus, perhaps, would call the species Mus minimus. 



VOL. I. 



