40 WHITE 



LETTER XVI 



SELBORNE, April i8M, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, The history of the stone-curlew, Charadrius 

 cedicnemtis, is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never 

 more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the 

 field; so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often 

 destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg 

 like partridges, etc., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by 

 the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their 

 best security ; for their feathers are so exactly of the color of 

 our gray 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 al- 

 most any day ; and any evening you may hear them round the 

 village, for they make a clamor which may be heard a mile. 

 CEdicnemus 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 ; 1 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-quar- 

 ters 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-colored ; of the less black. 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields 

 last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whis- 

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



