The Natural History of Selborne 71 



grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly 

 believed but that it had been a locitsta whispering in the 

 bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that 

 it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking 

 in the thickest part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard dis- 

 tance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a 

 person to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted, 

 and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a 

 hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns ; 

 yet it would not come into fair sight ; but in a morning, early, 

 and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping 

 and shivering with its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no know- 

 ledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, 

 who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from 

 which it is very distinct. See Ray's " Philos. Letters," p. 108. 



A LIST OF THE SUMMER BIRDS OF PASSAGE DISCOVERED 



IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE 



ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR. 



LINNJEI NOMINA. 



Smallest willow-wren, Motacilla trochilns. 



Wryneck, Jynx torquilla. 



House-swallow, Hirundo rustica. 



Martin, Hirundo urbica. 



