OF SELBORNE 55 



One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, 

 which at first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark, 1 

 but, on a nicer examination, it answered much better to the 

 description of that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincoln- 

 shire. 2 My bird I describe thus : " It is a size less than the 

 " grasshopper-lark ; the head, back, and coverts of the wings, 

 " of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the grasshopper- 

 " lark ; over each eye is a milkwhite stroke ; the chin and throat 

 " are white, and the under parts of a yellowish white ; the rump 

 "(is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed ; the bill is 

 " dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky ; the hinder claw long 

 "and crooked". The person that shot it says that it sung so 

 like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one ; and that it sings all 

 night : but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part, 

 I suspect it is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham 

 in Ray's Letters : see p. 108. He also procured me a grasshopper- 

 lark. 



The question that you put with regard to those genera of 

 animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came there, 

 and whence ? is too puzzling for me to answer ; and yet so 

 obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks 

 into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. 

 Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to sup- 

 port whatever theory they shall chuse to maintain ; but then 

 the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as 

 another's, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late 

 writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments 

 of those that have gone before, as I remember, stock America 

 from the western coast of Africa and the south of Europe ; and 

 then break down the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic.* 



1 For this salicaria see letter August 30, 1769. 



[The Sedge-warbler. See next letter. ' ' The remark of White's informant 

 that the bird he procured ' sung so like a reed sparrow ' is a mistake which a 

 casual observer might easily make, since the sedge-warbler often sings concealed in 

 a patch of reeds or sedge, while the unmusical reed-bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus), 

 sitting conspicuously on a reed top, gets all the credit for the song" (Harting). 

 The late Mr. Seebohm (British Birds, vol. i., p. 353) needlessly accused White of 

 confusing this bird with the reed-warbler (Acrocepkalus streperus, Vieill.), a bird 

 apparently unknown to him, because he describes the upper parts as being " with- 

 out those dark spots of the grasshopper-lark ". Neither reed-warbler nor sedge- 

 warbler has dark spots in the centre of the feathers answering exactly to those in 

 the grasshopper- war bier.] 



2 [The seat of Sir Joseph Banks.] 



3 [Among the "late writers of this sort" was Buffon (Histoire Naturelle). 

 Those who remember what a facile expedient writers on geographical distribution 



