70 NATURAL HISTORY 



" than the grasshopper-lark ; the head, back, and coverts of 

 " the wings of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the 

 " grasshopper-lark ; over each eye is a milkwhite stroke ; the 

 " chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yellowish 

 " w r hite; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp- 

 " pointed; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky; 

 " the hinder claw long and crooked." The person that shot it 

 says that it sung so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one ; 

 and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther in- 

 quiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of locus- 

 tella, hinted at by Dr. Derham, in Ray^s Letters : see p. 108. 

 He also procured me a grasshopper-lark. 



The question that you put with regard to those genera of 

 animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came 

 there, and whence ? is too puzzling for me to answer ; and 

 yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If 

 one looks into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is 

 to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausible 

 arguments to support whatever theory they shall chuse to 

 maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis 

 is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on 

 conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be 

 seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I re- 

 member, stock America from the western coast of Africa and 

 the south of Europe; and then break down the Isthmus that 

 bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent 

 piece of machinery : it is a difficulty worthy of the interpo- 

 sition of a god ! " Incredulus odi" 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. 



equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. Vina. GEOBG. 



WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam, 



What time the may-fly d haunts the pool or stream ; 



d The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn, comes forth from 



