NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE III 



hens, partridges and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as 

 dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, 

 and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can ob- 

 serve, many birds that dust themselves never wash ; and I once 

 thought that those birds that wash themselves would never 

 dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common house- 

 sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovel- 

 ling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great 

 washers. Does not the skylark dust ? 



Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one 

 method of purification from these pulveratrices? because I find 

 from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journey- 

 ing in a sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated 

 hours he strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his 

 body over with sand or dust. 



A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the 

 nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the 

 little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and 

 found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a tit- 

 lark ; it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 



" in tenui re 



Majores pennas nido extendisse " . 



and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 

 teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffet- 

 ing with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam ap- 

 peared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, 

 and expressing the greatest solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; 

 and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on 

 the Libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as 

 they settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. 

 Notwithstanding what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to 

 believe that they are birds of prey. 



This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard 

 of at Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross- 

 beaks (Loxice curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the 

 pine-groves belonging to this house ; the water-ousel is said to 

 haunt the mouth of the Lewes River, near Newhaven ; and the 



