66 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 milk-white 

 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 tl;at 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 support whatever theory they shall choose 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. But this is making use of 

 a violent piece of machinery ; it is a difficulty worthy of 

 the interposition of a god ! ^^ Incredulus odi." 



