246 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XLIX 



Selborne, May 7th, 1779. 



It is now more than forty years that I have paid some 

 attention to the ornithology of this district, without being 

 able to exhaust the subject : new occurrences still arise as 

 long as any inquiries are kept alive. 



In the last week of last month five of those most rare 

 birds, too uncommon to have obtained an English name, 

 but known to naturalists by the terms of himantopus, or 

 loripes, and Charadrius himantopus, were shot upon the 

 verge of Frinsham-pond, a large lake belonging to the 

 Bishop of Winchester, and lying between Wolmer-forest 

 and the town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The 

 pond keeper says there were three brace in the flock ; but, 

 that after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the 

 sixth to remain unmolested. One of these specimens I 

 procured, and found the length of the legs to be so 

 extraordinary, that, at first sight, one might have supposed 

 the shanks had been fastened on to impose on the credulity 

 of the beholder : they were legs in caricatura ; and had we 

 seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen we 

 should have made large allowances for the fancy of the 

 draughtsman. These birds are of the plover family, and 

 might with propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, 

 under that idea, gives them the apposite name of Vechasse. 

 My specimen, when drawn and stuflTed with pepper, weighed 

 only four ounces and a quarter, though the naked part of 

 the thigh measured three inches and a-half, and the legs 

 four inches and a-half. Hence we may safely assert that 

 these birds exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably the 



