H6 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



As far as I can observe, 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 pulvera- 

 trices, being frequently seen grovelling 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 journeying 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 extraordi- 

 nary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo 

 hatched in the nest of a titlark : 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 teazed it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring 

 and buffeting with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe 

 of a dam appeared 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 libellulae, 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 (loxiae curvirostrae) 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 



