OF SELBOENE. 273 



LETTER XLIX. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, May 7, 1779. 



>T 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 stiU 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 Cliaradrius Himantopus, 1 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. Tho 

 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 extra- 

 ordinary, 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 draughts- 

 man. 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 L'Echasse. My 

 specimen, when drawn and stuffed 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 



1 Himantopus candidus, Bonnaterre ; H. melanopterus, Temminck. In 

 the first edition of the present work, which appeared in quarto in 1789, 

 amongst other illustrations is a full-page one of this singular-looking 

 bird. ED. 



T 



