ioo The Natural History of Selborne 



Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs 

 and two autumns, are most punctual in their return ; and exhibit a 

 new migration unnoticed by the writers, who supposed they never 

 were to be seen in any southern countries. 



One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which 

 at first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark,* but, on a 

 nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of that 

 species which you shot at Revesby, 1 in Lincolnshire. My bird I 

 describe thus : " It is a size less than the grasshopper-lark ; the head, 

 back, and coverts of the wings, of a dusky brown, without those 

 dark spots of the grasshopper-lark ; over each eye is a milk-white 

 stroke ; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a 

 yellowish white ; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail 

 sharp-pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky ; 

 the hinder claw long and crooked." The person that shot it says 

 that it sung so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one ; and that 

 it sings all night : but this account merits farther inquiry. For my 

 part, I suspect it is a second sort of locustela, hinted at by Dr. 

 Derham in Ray's Letters : see p. 108. He also procured me a 

 grasshopper-lark. 



The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals 

 that are peculiar to America, viz., how they came there, and whence ? 

 is too puzzling for me to answer ; and yet so obvious as often to 

 have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that 

 subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily 

 advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall 

 choose to maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypo- 

 thesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on 

 conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be seen 

 all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I remember, 

 stock America from the western coast of Africa and the south of 

 Europe ; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged over the 

 Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent piece of machinery ; it 

 is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god ! " Incredulus odi." 



* For this Saiicaria, see letter, August 3Oth, 1769. 

 1 The scat of Sir Joseph Banks. ED. 



