OF SELBORNE. 107 



LETTER XX. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR sm, SELBORNE, Oct. 8, 1768. 



IT is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany : all nature is 

 so full, that that district produces the greatest variety 

 which is the most examined. Several birds, which are 

 said to belong to the north only, are, it seems, often in 

 the south. I have discovered this summer three spe- 

 cies of birds with us, which writers mention as only to 

 be seen in the northern counties l . 



The first that was brought me (on the 14th of May) 



characteristic marks of these little birds. Yet it is only within these few 

 years that they have been well understood ; and it is even now occasion- 

 ally necessary to insist upon the really distinctive characters between 

 them. Nothing, however, can be more defined than the statement in the 

 text. There are three sorts of willow wrens, the smallest of which has 

 black legs ; this is the chiff-chaff, the earliest in its arrival, the chirper of 

 but two notes, referred to in Letter XVI., and described in a note on that 

 letter by the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert under the name of Sylv. loquax: 

 the others have flesh-coloured legs. One of them, the largest bird of the 

 three, has the yellow green of its upper surface more vivid than the 

 others, and its belly of a clearer white ; it haunts the tops of trees, and 

 makes a sibilous noise, shivering with its wings, this is the Sylv . sibilatrix, 

 BECHST. The remaining bird, of intermediate size, and having a joyous, 

 easy, laughing note, is the Sylv. Trochilus, LATH. The distinctions are 

 thoroughly intelligible. Arranged in a tabular form they would stand 

 thus, Sylvia. 



Legs black Sylv. loquax. 



flesh-coloured, 



Belly yellowish . . Sylv. Trochilus. 



white .... Sylv. sibilatrix. 



E. T. B. 



1 There is nothing highly remarkable in the occurrence of these birds 

 in southern counties. The sandpiper is disposed to breed in any part of 

 England, where it can be free from disturbance. The red-backed butcher 

 bird belongs rather to the south, and is scarcely ever met with in the 

 north. And the ring-ousel is in Hampshire a bird of passage, crossing 

 that county in the spring and autumn, in its way to and from its breeding 

 places in the rocky districts of the north and west. E. T. B. 



