112 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



once thought that those birds that wash themselves would 

 never dust ; but here I find myself mistaken ; for common 

 house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequently seen 

 grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great 

 washers. Does not the skylark dust ? 



Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one 

 method of purification from these pulveratrices ? because I find, 

 from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journey- 

 ing in a sandy desert where no water is to be ftmnd, at stated 

 hours he strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his 

 body over with sand or dust. 



A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl 

 in the nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed 

 by the little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, 

 and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a 

 titlark : it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 

 " to have its large wings extended beyond the nest,"- 



" in tenui re 



Majores pennas nido extendisse - 



and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 

 teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting 

 with its wings like a gamecock. The dupe of a dam appeared 

 at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and 

 expressing the greatest solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; 

 and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 

 libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they 

 settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Not- 

 withstanding what Linnreus says, I cannot be induced to believe 

 that they are birds of prey. 



This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of 

 at Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks 

 (Loxice curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine- 

 groves belonging to this house : the water-ousel is said to haunt 

 the mouth of the Lewes river, near Newhaven ; and the Cornish 

 chough builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex 

 shore. 



