OF SELBORNE. 375 



LETTER LVIT. 



TO THE SAME. 



A RARE, and I think a new, little bird frequents my 

 garden, which I have great reason to think'is the petty- 

 chaps l : it is common in some parts of the kingdom ; 

 and I have received formerly several dead specimens 

 from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white- 

 throat, but has a more white or rather silvery breast 

 and belly; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, 

 and hops from bough to bough, examining every part 

 for food ; it also runs up the stems of the crown-im- 

 perials, and, putting its head into the bells of those 

 flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium 

 of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like 

 the hedge sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots 

 and mown walks. 



One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing 

 man, informs me that, in the beginning of May, and 



1 This bird certainly was not the pettychaps, which has not the manners 

 here described. The detail exactly answers to the blue-gray or lesser 

 whitethroat (Sylvia silviella) of some English authors, which I have de- 

 monstrated to be the Sylvia Curruca by priority of name, la fauvette 

 babillarde of French writers, and bianchetto of Scopoli. I suspect that 

 the name linty-white in North Britain belongs to this bird, though attri- 

 buted by Bewick to the chiffchaff, which I have never been able to meet 

 with in the north of England, though it may be found in some parts 

 thereof; but its colour can in no ways deserve that name : whereas the 

 white breast of the blue-gray cannot fail to attract notice. I have given 

 a full description and account of it in a note on page 173. In Yorkshire 

 the yellowhammer is called goldfinch ; the goldfinch, redcap ; the chaf- 

 finch, bull's-pink or bullfinch ; the ox bird or large titmouse, blackcap; 

 the hedge warbler, cuddy ; the brown wren, tomtit ; the yellow wren, 

 small-straw ; and the whin chat, grass chat : synonyms which I have not 

 seen recorded. I cannot find that the true blackcap or the blue-gray have 

 any name in Yorkshire, where they seem to escape observation amongst 

 the lower orders, which is singular, considering how loud the blackcap 

 sings all summer, and how much it attacks the fruit. W. H. 



