8(> NATURAL HISTORY 



and summer till the end of August, us appears by my 

 journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh- 

 coloured ; of the less, black. 



He admits that some persons had told him it was so, but he cannot believe 

 that the young birds should have more brilliant plumage than adults. 

 The fact is however so, as above stated. I have had the young male in 

 September, with the under parts of a beautiful yellow, which disappears 

 before the breeding season. 



3. Sylvia ri(/a, LATH. ; monotonous wren, ching ching, or lesser petty- 

 chaps. The name lesser pettychaps is absurd, because the pettychaps is 

 a bird of different affinities and habits, belonging to a different genus, 

 or division at least of the genus ; I therefore propose to call it mono- 

 tonous wren, being the only one of the four which expresses but a single 

 note or sound. I observed and listened to one for a long time a few 

 years ago, on the 28th of May, on some oak trees in Combe Wood, near 

 Kingston upon Thames, at which time the hen bird, of which I could see 

 nothing, was probably sitting in the thicket. I have frequently heard 

 the note in Yorkshire, and last spring directed my gamekeeper to try to 

 discover the nest of one that frequented the trees in a small coppice at 

 Spofforth ; but, under the erroneous impression that the bird was the pouil- 

 lot of M. Temminck, he was directed to seek above his head and it was not 

 discovered. The Sylv. rufa. is said to breed on the ground. This bird is 

 figured by Werner, but his specimen is of a very deep yellow on the under 

 parts, having been probably a young male. It is remarkable that all 

 this race of birds instead of putting on a brighter plumage in the season 

 of love, assume a plainer garb, and lose the bright yellow which adorns 

 the young males in autumn. This extends even to the pettychaps, Curruca 

 hortcnais. 



QUILL-FEATHERS OF THE CHING CHING. 



4. Sylvia loquax, HERBERT; loquacious wren or chiff chaff. This spe- 

 cies I proposed, in a Note on the edition of this work published in 1833. 

 to call loquaxj because it articulates its singular song chiff chaff, chivvy 

 chaffy, as distinctly as a man can pronounce it. It had never been 

 named, and had been entirely overlooked by ornithologists or con- 

 founded with either Sylv. Hippolais or rvfu. It is much scarcer than the 

 others, and like the golden wren it affects, I believe, the neighbourhood 

 of fir trees; and, unless it breeds, like the other three, on the ground, I 

 suspect that it may build in them, perhaps hanging its nest under the 



