NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 59 



grasshopper-lark; over each eye is a milk-white stroke; 

 the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yel- 

 lowish white ; 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 inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort 

 of locustela, 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 choose 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 argu- 

 ments of those that have gone before, as I remember, 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 interposition of a 

 god! " Incredulus odi" 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK 



equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. VIRG. Georg. 



WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam, 

 What time the may-fly 1 haunts the pool or stream ; 

 When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 

 What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; 

 Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant 2 cuckoo's tale ; 



