OF SELBORNE 37 



The grasshopper-lark 1 began his sibilous note in my fields last 

 Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 

 this little bird, which seems to be close by though at an hundred 

 yards distance ; and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder 

 than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted 

 with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 

 hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a 

 locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when 

 you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful 

 creature, sculking in the thickest part of a bush ; and will sing 

 at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to 

 get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it 

 haunted ; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before 

 us for an hundred yards together, through the bottom of the 

 thorns ; yet it would not come into fair sight : but in a morning 

 early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping 

 and shivering with it's wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge 

 of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who 

 apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati,' 2 from which 

 it is very distinct. See Ray's Philos. Letters, p. 108. 



The fly-catcher 3 (stoparola) has not yet appeared : it usually 

 breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing : it's note is short 

 and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. 

 The willow-wrens 4 (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, 

 destroying the pease, cherries, currants, &c. ; and are so tame 

 that a gun will not scare them. 



A LIST of the SUMMER BIRDS of PASSAGE discovered in this 

 neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the Order in which they 

 appear : 5 



Linnasi Nomina. 



Smallest willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus : 



Wryneck, Jynx torquilla : 



House-swallow, Hirundo rustica : 



1 [Now called the grasshopper warbler (Locustella ncevia, Bodd.),] 



2 [The willow- wrens.] 



'' [The spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa grisola, L.).] 



4 [Chiffchafts and willow- wrens come into gardens after their moult in August, 

 but feed chiefly on aphides and other insects, in pursuit of which they may do a 

 certain amount of damage to fruit. Garden-warblers and blackcaps, on the other 

 hand, certainly eat fruit ; and Mr. Harting has suggested that the young of the 

 former (a species unknown to White) were mistaken by him for willow- wrens.] 



5 [In preparing this list for Pennant's use White adopts the Linnaean names ; 

 in Letters I. and II. to Barrington he gives the names used in Ray's Synopsis 



