278 



CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



Mr. RAY to Dr. HANS SLOANE. 



SIR, I received yours of the 17th, and am very glad 

 that the box with the papers is come safe to your hands, 

 though I did not much fear the loss of it. You need not 

 be solicitous about the charge, for there was nothing extra- 

 ordinary, and yet if there had, I ought in all reason to have 

 borne it. 



Two things there are I cannot yet fully agree with you 

 in 1. The referring of the old-men or rain -fowl to the 

 cuckoo. For the cuckoo is so strange, anomalous, and 

 singular a bird, and so remarkable, and taken notice of 

 even by the vulgar, for his voice, manner of breeding, and 

 absconding all winter, that I think no bird that agreeth 

 not with him in these particulars ought to be joined with 

 him, neither is the length of the tail a sufficient argument; 

 for the synx, a genuine woodpecker, hath a tail as long in 

 proportion to his body, and marked with cross-bars too. 

 2. In referring the Savanna-bird to the lark-kind. For 

 that distinction of small birds into slender and thick- 

 billed, or, as our fowlers phrase it, into soft and hard- 

 beaked, dividing the numerous genera of them almost 

 equally, is of such eminent use for the clear understanding 

 and ranking of them, that I think it ought by no means 

 to be rejected, or the birds of those kinds confounded, 

 though the places they frequent, and their shape and man- 

 ner of living may agree, and that characteristic note of the 

 lark-kind may be common to some of them, I mean having 

 a very long back claw or spur. I have taken notice of 

 some that agree with larks in these particulars, as the 

 bunting, and a sort of mountain finch. Yet I believe 

 that there is a difference in the diet of these birds. For 

 the slender-billed, though they feed upon the pulp and 

 grains of fruit, yet they seldom meddle with dry seeds 

 unless driven by hunger. But the hard-billed touch not 



