NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 247 



LETTER XLIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, May "jth, 1779. 



IT is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention 

 to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the 

 subject : new occurences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept 

 alive. 



In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, too 

 uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to 

 naturalists by the terms of himantopus, or loripes, and charadrius 

 himantopus,* were shot upon the verge of Frinsham-pond, a large 

 lake belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, and lying between 

 Woolmer-forest and the town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. 

 The pond keeper says there were three brace in the flock : but, that 

 after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the sixth to remain 

 unmolested. One of these specimens I procured, and found the 

 length of the legs to be so extraordinary, that, at first sight, one 

 might have supposed the shanks had been fastened on to impose 

 on the credulity of the beholder : they were legs in caricaturaj 

 and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen 

 we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughts- 

 man. These birds are of the plover family, and might with propriety 

 be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives them the 

 apposite name of V echasse. My specimen, when drawn and stuffed 

 with pepper, weighed only four ounces and a quarter, though the 

 naked part of the thigh measured three inches and a half, and the 

 legs four inches and a half. Hence we may safely assert that these 

 birds exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably the greatest length 

 of legs of any known bird. The flamingo, for instance, is one of 

 the most long-legged birds, and yet it bears no manner of pro- 

 portion to the himantopus j for a cock flamingo weighs, at an 



* " Himantopedes loripedes quidam quibus serpendo ingredi natura est." i/iavrowot/?, 

 name of a tribe of Ethiopians, used by Pliny. 



Himantopus melanopterns of modern ornithologists. It has been known as an 

 occasional visitant to Britain since the time of Sibbald, but may yet be considered as ?a? 

 of our rarest species. We have no good detailed account of its habits. 



