WOOD WARBLER. 347 



larised in his letters to his friend Pennant in the year 1768 ; 

 but the bird does not appear to be included in the edition 

 of the British Zoology published in 1776. The first edi- 

 tion of White's Natural History of Selborne, which con- 

 tained several notices of this bird, was published in 1789. 

 In November, 1 792, Mr. Thomas Lamb supplied some par- 

 ticulars of this same bird to the Linnean Society, which 

 were published in the second volume of the Transactions of 

 the Society ; and in 1796 Colonel Montagu, having seen 

 and heard this species in various localities in several 

 western counties, and having obtained also some specimens, 

 nests, and eggs, furnished further particulars to the Lin- 

 nean Society, which were published in the fourth volume of 

 the Transactions. This bird is now very well known, and 

 is at once distinguished from the true trochilus, or Willow 

 Warbler, with which it is most likely to be confounded, by 

 the broad streak over the eye and ear-coverts of a bright 

 sulphur-yellow, by the pure green colour of the upper parts 

 of the body, and by the delicate and unsullied white of the 

 belly and under tail-coverts. In addition to these distinc- 

 tions, which on comparing the two birds will be found very 

 obvious, the wing of the Wood Warbler is nearly half an 

 inch longer from the carpal joint to the end of the quill- 

 feathers than that of the Willow Warbler, although the 

 birds themselves differ but little in their respective whole 

 lengths ; the wings of the Wood Warbler when closed 

 reaching over three-fourths of the length of the tail, while 

 those of the Willow Warbler, next to be described, reach 

 only to the end of the upper tail-coverts, or less than half 

 way along the tail-feathers. The two birds here named, 

 with two others, are the only British species now included 

 in the genus Sylvia, as at present restricted. They differ 

 from the warblers already described in the general colour 

 of their plumage ; in not being fruit-eaters ; they almost 



