XVI.] OF SELBORNE. 51 



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. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive 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 drams and a half, while the 

 latter weighs but two ; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than 

 the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage 



o 



M:THATI:H s E<M?. UOLDEN-TROWNED WREN'S 



that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two 

 notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the 

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

 journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured 

 of the less, black. 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last 

 Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 

 this little bird, which seems to be close by though at a hundred 

 yards distance ; and when close at your ear is scarce any louder 

 than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted 

 with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 

 hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a 

 locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh 

 when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most 



