TAME SNAKE SQUNCK. 85 



strangely classed in Ray, who ranges it among 

 his pici affines. It ought, no doubt, to have gone 

 among his aviculcs caudd unicolore, and among your 

 slender-billed small birds of the same division. 

 Linnaeus might with great propriety have put it 

 into his genus of motacilla ; and the motacilla 

 salicaria of his Fauna Suecica seems to come the 

 nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting 

 the sides of ponds and rivers where there is covert, 

 and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country 

 people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It 

 sings incessantly night and day during the breed- 

 ing time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, 

 a skylark ; and has a strange hurrying manner in 

 its song. My specimens correspond most minutely 

 to the description of your fen-salicaria shot near 

 Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an excellent charac- 

 teristic of it when he says, "Rostrum etpedes in hoc 

 aviculd multo major es sunt quampro corporis rationed 



I have got you the egg of an cedicnemus, or 

 stone curlew, which was picked up in a fallow on 

 the naked ground : there were two ; but the finder 

 inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he 

 saw them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I 

 wish I had not forgot to mention the faculty that 

 snakes have of stinking se defendendo. I knew a 

 gentleman who kept a tame snake, which was in 

 its person as sweet as any animal while in good 

 humour and unalarmed ; but as soon as a stranger : 

 or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled 

 the room with such nauseous effluvia, as rendered 

 it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, 

 of Ray's Synop. Quadr. is an innocuous and sweet 

 animal ; but, when pressed hard by dogs and men, 

 it can eject such a most pestilent and fetid smell and 

 excrement, that nothing can be more horrible. 



