NA 7 URAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 135 



partridges, and pheasants, &c., are pidveratrices, such as dust them- 

 selves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding 

 themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds 

 that dust themselves never wash ; and I once thought that those 

 birds that wash themselves would never dust ; but here I find myself 

 mistaken ; for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, 

 being frequently seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and 

 yet they are great washers. Does not the skylark dust ? * 



Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method 

 of purification from these pulveratrices ? because I find from tra- 

 vellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a 

 sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips 

 off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over with sand 

 or dust. 



A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the 

 nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the 

 little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found 

 that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark ; it was 

 become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 



in tenui re 

 Majores pennas nido extendisse . 



an^ was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased 

 it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its 

 wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a 

 distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing 

 .the greatest solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; and 

 found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 

 Libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they 

 settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Not- 

 withstanding what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe 

 that they are birds of prey. 



This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at 

 Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks 

 (/ OXICB curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves 

 belonging to this house ; the water-ousel is said to haunt the mouth 

 of the Lewes river, near Newhaven ; and the Cornish chough 

 builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore. 



I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my 



* The skylark does dust. 



