104 The Natural History of Selborne 



veyed it alive and dead, and have procured several specimens, and 

 am perfectly persuaded myself (and trust you will soon become 

 convinced of the same) that it is no more nor less than the -passer 

 arundinaceus minor of Ray. This bird, by some means or other, 

 seems to be entirely omitted in the "British Zoology"; and one reason 

 probably was because it is so strangely classed in Ray, who ranges 

 it among his Pici affines. It ought no doubt to have gone among 

 his Aviculte caudd unicolore, and among your slender-billed small 

 birds of the same division. Linnaeus might with great propriety 

 have put it into his genus of motacilla ; and motacilla salicaria of 

 his fauna suecica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no uncom- 

 mon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers where there is 

 covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country people in 

 some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night and 

 day during the breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a 

 swallow, a sky-lark ; and has a strange hurrying manner in its song. 

 My specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your 

 fen salicaria shot near Revesby. 1 Mr. Ray has given an excellent 

 characteristic of it when he says, " Rostrum et pedes in hdc aviculd 

 mulfb majores sunt quam pro corporis rationed 2 See letter, May 

 29, 1769. 



I have got you the egg of an cedicnemus^ or stone-curlew, which 

 was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground : there were two ; 

 but the finder inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he 

 saw them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had not 

 forgot to mention the faculty that snakes have of stinking se defen- 

 dendo. I knew a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which was in 

 its person as sweet as any animal while in good humour and un- 

 alarmed ; but as soon as a stranger, or a dog or cat, came in, it fell 

 to hissing, and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as 

 rendered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck [skunk], 

 of Ray's " Synop. Quadr." is an innocuous and sweet animal ; but, 

 when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a most 



1 This is the sedge-warbler, dcrocephalus phragmitis. ED. a The bill and 

 feet in this bird are much too large to be proportionate with its body. ED. 



