OF SELBORNE. 47 



they skulk among the stones, which are their best security ; 

 for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our grey 

 spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches 

 the eye of the young bird, 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. Oedic- 

 ncmus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their 

 legs seem swoln 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 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. 



* \_GEdicnemus crepitans, the stone-curlew. The common English name 

 is calculated to mislead us ; it has no near affinity to the curlew (Nume- 

 nius), but is indebted for the name to the similarity of its cry. Its 

 nearest affinity appears certainly to be to the plovers, although Gould, 

 in his ' Birds of Europe/ recognized its relationship to the bustard, as 

 Pennant had done before. The intimate acquaintance with its habits 

 which White has shown, and his assurance that he could show them on 

 any day, indicates that it was much more common at Selborne in his time 

 than it has been of late. I have occasionally heard its cry late in the 

 evening as it has passed at a considerable height over the village ; but in 

 thirty years I have never seen one, alive or dead. It is remarkable that 

 Yarrell does not mention White's name in his description of this bird, 

 although the account which he had given in such detail was the fullest 

 extant. T. B.] 



