82 NATURAL HISTORY 



a joyous, easy laughing note; the other a harsh loud 

 chirp. The former is every way larger, and three 



Sylv. Trochilus the second is equal to the sixth, and shorter than the 

 three intermediate. In the foreign specimen of Sylv. rufa, a male bird, 

 and in that killed in England, the second is equal to the eighth, and 

 shorter than all the intermediate. In Sylv. loquax, the chiff chaff, now 

 before me, the second is longer than the seventh, and shorter than the four 

 intermediate ; and this exactly agrees with Mr. Sweet's bird, from which 

 I made the description in the former edition, after its death. It was a 

 male bird ; whence it appears that the difference is not that of sex, but of 

 species. In my former description, it should be remarked, I did not 

 count the obsolete quill, and my first was properly the second. 



The chiff chaff is not plentiful in this country, unless perhaps in some 

 particular situations, which I have not visited. I never have seen one 

 in Yorkshire, and, though particularly watchful for it in the south of 

 England, it is six or seven years since I have seen one alive. 



The bird which I supposed (as it now appears, erroneously, never 

 having been willing to kill these harmless creatures) to be the pouillot 

 or Hippolais of M. Temminck, I have seen sitting on the summit of an oak 

 tree at the time of its leafing, and reiterating its monotonous note ching 

 ching; and it has been pointed out to me at such moments by Mr. Sweet, 

 as being one of the allied wrens. In the Faune Franchise of Vieillot, I 

 find a Sylv. Collybita ; to which he quotes as synonymous, Motacilla rufa, 

 LINN., and rufous warbler, LATH., having improperly substituted a new 

 name for one which must not be changed, although rufous is but ill 

 warranted by a little reddish tint on the flanks. He subjoins as vulgar 

 names, compteur d'argent and chofti ; and states that it often sits on the 

 summits of trees, where the male utters its note, which has obtained it in 

 Normandy the name of money-counter. He continues to say that the 

 note of this bird has appeared to himself to express tip tap repeated 

 several times. It is, I think, quite clear, that the bird which is called, 

 on account of its note uttered on the top of a high tree, money-counter or 

 money-changer, is that which I have heard in such a situation, uttering 

 its unvaried ching or chink chink. The chiff chaff doe* not sit on the 

 summit of a tree, but is in perpetual motion, distinctly articulating chiff 

 chaff, chivvy chaffy ; and it is equally clear that such notes could never have 

 suggested the idea of chinking money, but they are the sounds which 

 Mr. Vieillot has not very accurately represented by tip tap. It must be 

 recollected, that to convey to a Frenchman the sound we give to chiff or 

 chaff, the letter t must be prefixed. It thus appears that two different 

 birds have been confounded under the name Sylv. Collybita, newly intro- 

 duced by Vieillot, and that of Mot. ru,fa of Linnaeus, on the continent, as 

 they hare been here : that Sylvia rufa is the ching ching, and that the chiff 

 chaff had never had any scientific name appropriated to it, till I desig- 

 nated it as Sylv. loquax, except the improper application of the names 

 Hippolais and rufa to it. Sylv. rufa is rather larger than Sylc. loqu<t.r, its 

 wing measuring four inches and seven-eighths, while that of loquax is 

 only four inches and a half long: besides the rufous tinge on its flanks, 



