OF SliLBORNE. 87 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my 

 fields last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing 



boughs, as the golden wren does. I have never been able to meet with 

 it in Yorkshire. The last live specimen I saw, was on a large cedar 

 tree on the lawn in the garden of Highclere House in Hampshire at 

 Whitsuntide in 1828 or 1829. It did not seem disposed to quit the tree, 

 but repeated frequently its remarkable and articulate notes. I sought 

 in vain on the ground for its nest, and it did not then occur to me to 

 search the cedar tree, which indeed would not have been easily accom- 

 plished. Mr. Sweet in his article Sylv. Hippolais, gives an account of a 

 Sylv. loquax which he kept in confinement, confounding-ij with the former 

 of the two species; and it does not appear whether the figure he gives 

 was taken from an English or a foreign specimen : but it is incorrect at 

 all events, and does not truly represent any one of the allied species. I 

 examined carefully a dead specimen of Sylv. loquax, which Mr. Sweet 

 had kept in a cage the previous autumn and winter. It was a male bird, 

 and had been caught in a net, and frequently articulated its chiff chaff, 

 chivvy chaffy, while in confinement. It measured at full stretch but four 

 inches from the tip of the bill to the extremity of the tail, having much 

 resemblance to the female of the Sylv. Trochilvs, which is always smaller 

 and browner than the cock. Sylo. loquax has no yellow about it; there 

 is no line over the eye ; the colour is a uniform greenish brown, paler on 

 the breast and belly. The tail-feathers and quill-feathers of the wings 

 are dusky, edged with greenish brown ; the legs are dusky, by which it 

 may at all times be distinguished from the small hen Sylv. Trochilus. 

 The bill, measuring from the forehead, is only five-sixteenths of an inch 

 long, the under mandible and edges yellow, the upper part of the upper 

 mandible brown. Its shape is slender. The second (considering the 

 small abortive feather to be the first) quill-feather is a quarter of an inch 

 shorter than the third, but is longer than the seventh, the third, fourth, 

 and fifth almost of equal length. Another specimen since communicated 

 to me by Mr. Bennett, agrees in every respect with Mr. Sweet's bird, 

 except that it has a little tinge of yellow, being probably a young bird. 



QUILL-FEATHERS OF THE CHIFF CHAFF. 



| 



The outlines which I have made with minute exactness of the outer 

 part of the wing of each of these species, as well as of the pouillot of 

 M. Temminck (which not being Hippolais, I propose to call Sylv. Tem- 

 mincki), will render it easy to distinguish them. The quill-feathers of 

 Sylv. rufa are more pointed than those of loquax, and the whole bird 

 longer. Sylv. Nattereri, a species observed in Spain and Italy, is closely 



