"The Natural History of Selborne 69 



he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are 

 short and round ; of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. 

 Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a 

 bird, yet I could show you them almost any day ; and any evening 

 you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour 

 which may be heard a mile. CEdicnemus is a most apt and expressive 

 name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty 

 man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip- 

 fields. 



I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens ; * 

 two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to procure the third. 

 No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than 

 those two that I am acquainted with ; for the one has a joyous, easy, 

 laughing note, the other a harsh, loud chirp. The former is every 

 way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two 

 drams and a half, while the latter weighs but two ; so the songster is 

 one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first 

 summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes 

 excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and con- 

 tinues them through the spring and summer till the end of August, 

 as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of these two are 

 flesh-coloured ; of the less black. 



The grasshopper-lark 2 began his sibilous note in my fields last 

 Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this 

 little bird, which seems to be close by though at a hundred yards 

 distance ; and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when 

 a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and 

 known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have 

 hardly believed but that it had been a locusta 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 distance, provided it be con- 



1 These are doubtless the wood-wren, Sylvia (Phylloscopus) sibilatrix, called by 

 White the songster ; the willow-wren, Sylvia (Phylloscopus) trochilus ; and the chiff- 

 chaff, Sylvia hippolais (or Phylloscopus rufui), called by White the chirper. ED. 

 2 Now called the grasshopper-warbler, Salicaria locustella (^Locustella n<svia). ED. 



