OP SELBORNE. 125 



they breed on Dartmoor; and that they forsake that 

 wild district about the time that our visitors appear, 

 and do not return till late in the spring. 



I have taken a great deal of pains about your Sali- 

 caria and mine, with a white stroke over its eye and a 

 tawny rump. I have surveyed it alive and dead, and 

 have procured several specimens; and am perfectly 

 persuaded myself (and trust you will soon be convinced 

 of the same) that it is no more nor less than the Passer 

 arundinaceus minor of Ray. This bird, by some means 

 or other, seems to be entirely omitted in the British 

 Zoology; and one reason probably was because it is 

 so strangely classed in Ray, who ranges it among his 

 Picis affines. It ought no doubt to have gone among 

 his Aviculce cauda unicolore, and among your slender- 

 billed small birds of the same division. Linnaeus 

 might with great propriety have put it into his genus 

 of Motacilla ; and the Motacilla Salicaria of his Fauna 

 Suecica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no un- 

 common bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers 

 where there is covert, and the reeds and sedges of 

 moors. The country people in some places call it the 

 sedge bird. It sings incessantly night and day during 

 the breeding time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a 

 swallow, a skylark ; and has a strange hurrying manner 

 in its song. My specimens correspond most minutely 

 to the description of your fen Salicaria shot near 

 Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an excellent charac- 

 teristic of it when he says, " Rostrum et pedes in hac 

 avicula multo major es sunt quam pro corporis rationed 

 (See Letter, May 29, 1769 [XXIV.]) 



I have got you the egg of an (Edicnemus, or stone- 

 curlew, which was picked up in a fallow on the naked 

 ground : there were two ; but the finder inadvertently 

 crushed one with his foot before he saw them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I 

 had not forgot to mention the faculty that snakes have 

 of stinking se defendendo. I knew a gentleman who 



