NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 23 



Ornithology may be the extreme poverty and distance of 

 his country, into which the works of our great naturalist 

 may have never yet found their way. You have doubts, I 

 know, whether this Ornithology is genuine, and really the 

 work of Scopoli\ as to myself, I think I discover strong 

 tokens of authenticity ; the style corresponds with that of 

 his Entomology ; and his characters of his Ordines and 

 Genera are many of them new, expressive, and masterly. 

 He has ventured to alter some of the Linncean genera with 

 sufficient show of reason. 



It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many 

 swifts and no swallows at Staines ; because, in my long ob- 

 servations of those birds, I never could discover the least 

 degree of rivalry or hostility between the species. 



[Till this summer I used to think that the swallow was 

 the only bird that fed it's young on the wing ; but now I 

 am convinced that the house-martin does the same : but 

 the feat is done with so quick and momentary a sleight 

 that I don't wonder it escaped my observation. Scopoli 

 says that the house-martin does not feed its young after 

 they leave their nests : but he is mistaken.] 



Ray remarks that birds of the gallina order, as cocks and 

 hens, partridges, and pheasants, &c., ZTtpulveratrices, such as 

 dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, 

 and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can ob- 

 serve, many birds that dust themselves never wash ; and I 

 once thought that those birds that wa*sh 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 travellers 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 



