10 LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER 



pair) which, I suppose, you call Alauda non-cristata, seem 

 rather some species of the genus Motacilla *. Get the Pratin- 

 cola when you can. At present I am a stranger to your 

 (Enantl\e\. The Oriolus galbula must be a fine bird when in 

 perfection. Your barometer fluctuates much more than I 

 could have expected in so low a latitude and warm a climate : 

 in the tropics it hardly varies at all. Your last quail seems 

 to be a male, the former a female. You will pardon the 

 didactic air of my letters, which in bur present way of corre- 

 spondence is perhaps unavoidable. The wing of the Strix 

 bubo is " remigibus primoribus serratis :" had Linn, remarked 

 that, he would not have made that a specific difference to his 

 Stria aluco%. See Fauna Suec. p. 25. 



I am, &c. &c. 



LETTER III. 



Selborne, June 17 [1773]. 

 DEAR BROTHER, 



As you knew that the measles obtained very much in this 

 village, you could not much wonder if you were to hear that 



* [It would, of course, be useless to attempt any identification of these 

 birds. A. N.] 



t [Besides our common Saxicola cenanthe, three other species of Wheat- 

 ear, according to Col. Irby (* Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar,' 

 p. 79), frequent the Rock. It would, of course, be impossible to say which 

 of them John White's bird was j but Latham gives Gibraltar as a locality 

 for that which he calls the Russet Wheatear, and described a specimen 

 in the Leverian Museum. This is S. stapazina. A. N.] 



% [Herein White seems to have fallen into the error of supposing that 

 each particular feature included in the diagnosis given of a species by 

 Linnseus needs be peculiar thereto. On the contrary it is the aggregate 

 of these features that forms a specific character ; and by naming certain 

 other features Linnasus sufficiently guarded himself from such a mistake 

 as is imputed to him in the text. As to what his 8. aluco may have 

 been, see < Ibis,' 1876, pp. 101, 102. A. N.] 



[This and the following letters were written after John White's return 

 to England, which took place in May 1773. T. B.] 



