8o NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



I had sent the fishes of our streams up to Mazel to be 

 engraved. You had in it also a pretty exact description of 

 the Ambresbury loach taken from living specimens pro- 

 cured from thence ; my sentiments with regard to the use 

 of toads near Hungerford ; and my suspicions with regard 

 to the water-eft. 



Now I present you with a paper of remarks from Thomas 

 Barker Esq. of Lyndon-hall in Rutland, a Gent : who 

 marryed one of my Sisters. In it you will find, I think, 

 a curious register, kept by himself for 32 years, relative 

 to the coming and departure of birds of passage. If you 

 find anything in it, or among y e rest of the observations 

 worthy y r notice you are wellcome, he says, to make 

 what use you please of any of them.] 1 



I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species 

 of the willow- wrens (motacilloe trochili) which constantly and 

 invariably use distinct notes. But at the same time I am 

 obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark. 2 

 In my letter of April the i8th, I had told you peremptorily 

 that I knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then ; 

 but when I came to procure it, it proved, in all respects, 

 a very motacilla trochilus ; only that it is a size larger than 

 the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper 

 part of the body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer 

 white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying 

 before me ; and can discern that there are three gradations 



birds after their autumn moult renders their identification more difficult than 

 in the breeding season. 



The Willow Warbler and the Wood Warbler both build a half-domed grass- 

 nest on the ground, and the former bird lines its nest with feathers, while the 

 Wood Warbler lines its nest with horse-hair, and its eggs are unmistakable from 

 the purplish colour of the spots, which are often thickly clustered together at the 

 larger end. The spots on the eggs of the Willow Warbler are smaller and more 

 decidedly rufous in tint. The Chiff-chaff builds its nest a little way off the ground, 

 sometimes at a height of three or four feet, forms it of grass, but uses no moss like 

 the Willow Warbler, although it lines the nest with feathers. The eggs are 

 slightly smaller than those of the other two species, and the spots, either reddish 

 or purple, are more equally distributed over the surface of the egg. [R. B. S.] 



1 This "curious" (i.e. carefully made) register of the migration of birds in 

 Rutlandshire seems no longer to be in existence. [R. B. S.] 



2 "Brit. Zool.," edit 1776, octavo, p. 381. [G. W.] 



