74 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



characteristic of it when he says, "Rostrum et pedes in hdc ainculA 

 multb majores sunt qiiam pro corporis rationed See letter, May 

 29, 1769. (Preceding letter, XXIV.) 



I have got you the egg of an cedicnemus, 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 kept a tame snake, which was in its person 

 as sweet as any animal while in good humour and unalarmed ; but 

 as soon as a stranger, or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, 

 and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly 

 supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray's " Synop. Quadr." 

 is an innocuous and sweet animal ; but, when pressed hard by dogs 

 and men, it can eject such a mos.t pestilent and fetid smell and 

 excrement, that nothing can be more horrible. 



WOODCHAT. 



A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the lanius minor 

 cinerascens cum macula in scapidis alba, Raii; * which is a bird 

 that, at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of 

 " British Zoology," I find you had not seen. You have described it 

 well from Edwards' s drawing. 



* This is the Lanius rufus, or woodchat of British authors, and is extremely rare as a 

 British bird, resting upon the authority of a few straggling specimens being procured. 



