1776 OPINION OF GEIMM'S WOEK 289 



a man of genius ; but the two former say that he does 

 hardly seem to stick enough to nature ; and that his trees 

 are grotesque and strange. Brother Benjamin seems to 

 approve of him. They all allow that he excels in grounds, 

 water, and buildings. Friend Curtis recommends a Mr. 

 Mullins, a worker in oil-colours. Grimm, it seems, has 

 a way of staining his scapes with light water-colors, and 

 seems disposed much in scapes for light sketchings ; now I 

 want strong lights and shades and good trees and foliage. 



How apt is each person to think better of others' circum- 

 stances than his own ? you say my "letters are all written": 

 but I say that you are in much more forwardness, for your 

 Fauna is just finished : while my letters, many of them, 

 want transcribing ; and much writing gives me a pain in my 

 breast, and I can procure no amanuensis ; my journal is but 

 just begun ; and the antiquities of Selborne are not entered 

 upon at all. Friends in Oxon., I hope, are searching for me 

 amongst Dodsworth's collection of papers in the Bodleian 

 library, 60 vol. folio ; but the papers that I want to see 

 most are immured in the Archives of Magd. Coll. "de 

 mercatu, et feria, registro," &c., &c. 



Suspecting from its habit and shape that the fern-owl 

 might resemble the cuckow in its internal construction, I 

 procured two; and found my suspicions not ill grounded. For 

 upon dissection the crop or craw* lay behind the sternum^ 

 immediately 07i the bowels. It was bulky and stuffed hard 

 with large phalsenae of several sorts. Now as it appears 

 that this bird, which undoubtedly sits itself, is formed 

 exactly as cuckows are: we may reasonably conclude that 

 Mr. Herissant's conjecture, that cuckows are incapable of 

 incubation from the disposition of their intestines, becomes 

 groundless; and we are still to seek for the cause of that 



* Gilbert White uses the words **crop or craw" in a sense quite different 

 from that now applied to them. Neither the cuckoo nor fern-owl has a 

 **crop," and what he so called was simply the stomach. — A. N. 

 VOL. I. — U 



