i 9 4 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



lay a dead linnet; and in the coarse grass below, a 

 skylark and a hedge-sparrow were picked up, together 

 with a wren, and some dozen thrushes and starlings. 

 All along under the Roman wall dead birds were 

 found, lying in holes and crannies into which they had 

 crept for shelter from the icy wind outside. Alto- 

 gether more than fifty birds, chiefly thrushes and 

 starlings and redwings, were picked up about the 

 ancient ruins. 



Many years ago a colony of black-headed gulls had 

 their breeding-place in our parish. The spot is still 

 known as Peewit or Pewty Island, " peewit" being 

 the old name for this species of gull. It appears from 

 an old document that the sale of the young birds, then 

 accounted a great delicacy, realised as large a sum 

 as forty pounds per annum. The "gullery" has of 

 course been long since deserted, but it is interesting 

 to remember that the parish once numbered among 

 its inhabitants a colony of "peewits." On the spot 

 where the gulls nested, and along the shore of Horsea 

 Island, the eggs of the ringed plover are occasionally 

 found. In the coarse herbage that covers the sea- 

 banks the grasshopper warbler and the shore-pipit 

 build their nests, and every year a pair of red-backed 

 shrikes bravely endeavour to rear their young in a tall 

 quickset hedge, almost the only one now left in the 

 parish. The entire destruction of all hedgerows and 

 the uprooting of every tree, which marks the progress 

 of market-gardening, is of itself sufficient to explain 

 the scarcity of our songsters and smaller birds. 



The number of wild-flowers to be found in the 

 parish is remarkable. The chalk down, the gardens, 

 the salt marshes, the shore, the " cribs " covered with 

 water at every high tide, all yield a separate flora of 



