10 LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER 



pair) which, I suppose, you call Alauda non-crlstata, seem 

 rather some species of the genus Motacilla *. Get the Pratin- 

 cola when you can. At present I am a stranger to your 

 (Eaanthe f. The Oriolus galbula must be a fine bird when in 

 perfection. Your barometer fluctuates much more than I 

 could have expected in so low a latitude and warm a climate : 

 in the tropics it hardly varies at all. Your last quail seems 

 to be a male, the former a female. You will pardon the 

 didactic air of my letters, which in our present way of corre- 

 spondence is perhaps unavoidable. The wing of the Stria: 

 bubo is " remigibus primoribus serratis:" had Linn, remarked 

 that, he would not have made that a specific difference to his 

 Strix aluco%. See Fauna Suec. p. 25. 



I am, &c. &c. 



LETTER III. § 



Selborne, June 17 [1773]. 

 Dear Brother, 

 As you knew that the measles obtained very much in this 

 village, you could not much wonder if you were to hear that 



* [It would, of course, be useless to attempt any identification of these 

 birds.— A. N.] 



t [Besides our common Saxicola cenanthe, three other species of Wheat- 

 ear, according to Col. Irby (' Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar,' 

 p. 79), frequent the Rock. It would, of course, be impossible to say which 

 of them John White's bird was; but Latham gives Gibraltar as a locality 

 for that which he calls the Russet Wheatear, and described a specimen 

 in the Leverian Museum. This is S. stapazina. — A. N.] 



\ [Herein White seems to have fallen into the error of supposing that 

 each particular feature included in the diagnosis given of a species by 

 Linnaeus needs be peculiar thereto. On the contrary it is the aggregate 

 of these features that forms a specific character ; and by naming certain 

 otber features Linnaeus sufficiently guarded himself from such a mistake 

 as is imputed to him in the text. As to what his <!?. aluco may have 

 been, see < Ibis,' 1876, pp. 101, 102.— A. N.] 



§ [This and the following letters were written after John White's return 

 to England, which took place in May 1773. — T. B.] 



