OF SELBORNE. 175 



ance, and his motions are desultory ; but when that bird 

 sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours 



have seen, above four eggs. The colour of its upper parts is a bluish 

 gray, and it has none of the mahogany tint of the common whitethroat. 

 The throat and under parts are of a much purer white, and its legs dark 

 lead colour, whereas those of the whitethroat are yellowish. It is a 

 smaller bird and looks rather less slender and fuller of feathers about 

 the neck. It has a little the manners of the titmice, often running along 

 the wires at the top of its cage suspended by the feet, which is not usual 

 with birds of the genus Sylvia. It is of a remarkably, tame nature ; I 

 have taken a cock bird with its young, and the day after it was taken it 

 fed them with bread and hemp, and reared them ; and some months after 

 it would even perch upon my hand to feed itself. If fed too richly, with 

 much meat or milk, they will be subject to fits which are sure to be soon 

 fatal. They are fond of the seeds of the broad-leaved plantain. 



It is remarkable that the British name of the bird is noticed by no con- 

 tinental writer, and that it is entirely overlooked in Temminck's ornitho- 

 logy of Europe as if he had never heard of it; though there is a plate of 

 the bird, riest, and eggs (certainly a very bad one) in Latham's supple- 

 mental volume, which he might be expected to have seen. It cannot, 

 however, be doubted that the species must be as common on the continent 

 as it is here ; it is a more delicate bird than the whitethroat, and it can- 

 not easily escape notice, because it lives in the gardens and close to the 

 abodes of men. On comparing the various contradictory descriptions of 

 different authors of Sylvia Curruca, la fauvette babillarde of the French, 

 I am quite satisfied of its identity with the Sylv. silviella of English 

 writers. In the first place Sylv. Curruca is said to extend from Italy into 

 Sweden, yet has never been noticed in Great Britain ; secondly, Sylv. sil- 

 viella has been noticed in England only. I cannot doubt Scopoli's bian- 

 chetto, abundant in the gardens of Italy, being our silviella; the pure 

 white of its under parts deserves the name bianchetto ; their habits cor- 

 respond exactly, and bianchetto is quoted as a synonym to Sylv. Curruca. 

 Temminck says that Sylv. Curruca has greenish white eggs with bluish 

 and brownish spots. Latham says greenish spotted with brown, but in a 

 note he quotes from Linnaeus' Fauna Suecica ash colour spotted with fer- 

 ruginous, which accords with the eggs of Sylv. silviella. Bewick says 

 that the eggs of our lesser whitethroat (Sylv. silviella of Turton, Sweet, 

 Stephens in Shaw's Zoology, &c.) are " white spotted with brown, inter- 

 mixed with other spots of a pale bluish ash colour." This description 

 agrees very closely with Temminck's account of the eggs of Sylv. Curruca. 

 On close inspection of the eggs of the blue-gray or lesser whitethroat, 

 which are of a dirty white spotted with ferruginous, it appears that sorite 

 of the spots are strong, others deep-seated and dim, as if covered over by 

 a film, and seen through the ash colour or dirty white of the general sur- 

 face. This dimness of the spots is what Temminck and Bewick call 

 bluish without much reason, but no name of a colour is so frequently 

 misapplied as blue. The colour of the legs of Sylv. Curruca is not men- 

 tioned by Temminck; Latham says brown; in Werner's engraving they 



