NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 103 



wash 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 1 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 in the 

 nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the little 

 bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it 

 was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark ; it was become 

 vastly too big for its nest, appearing 



in tenui re 



Majores pennas nido extendisse 



and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it 

 for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffetting with its 

 wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, 

 hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing the greatest 

 solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; and 

 found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the Libellulcs, 

 or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they settled on the 

 weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Notwithstanding 

 what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe that they are birds 

 of prey. 



This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of at 

 Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks (Loxice 

 curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging 

 to this house ; the water- ousel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes 

 river, near Newhaven ; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all 

 along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore. 



I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my newly 

 discovered migraters) scattered, at intervals, all along the Sussex downs, 

 from Chichester to Lewes. Let them come from whence they will, it 

 looks very suspicious that they are cantoned along the coast in order 

 to pass the channel when severe weather advances. They visit us again 

 in April, as it should seem, in their return ; and are not to be found in 

 the dead of winter. It is remarkable that they are very tame, and 

 seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a person 

 with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelm- 

 stone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex downs; the 

 prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely ! 



As I rode along near the coast I kept a very sharp look-out in the 

 lanes and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the year, have 

 discovered some of the summer short-winged birds of passage 



* The skylark does dust. 



