462 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



Mr. Ray to Dr. Hans Sloane. 



Sir, — These are to acquaint you that the box of papers 

 you sent last week came safe to hand the begmning of 

 this. I cannot but wonder you should find such a multi- 

 tude of birds in Jamaica, and yet I suspect some might 

 escape your diligence. Among the numerous species of 

 Mexican birds described by Hernandez, possibly there 

 may be some the same with some of your smaller birds ; 

 but it would be too great a fatigue to compare them, his 

 being put in no order, so that for every bird one must 

 turn over the whole book, and read the descriptions too 

 of such as are of equal bigness. 



I am in some doubt about the Perdix montana, which 

 you, not without good reason, refer to the dove-kind, for 

 most of the notes agree to it : only by the figure it seems 

 to be shorter and rounder winged than any pigeon, and 

 therein to resemble the poultry kind. Its breeding upon 

 trees argues it to belong to the pigeon kind, for the young 

 of all the poultry tribe feeding themselves, must needs be 

 hatched on the ground. If it breeds but two young at a 

 time, and feeds them by eructating into their mouths meat 

 mollified in its crop, it is certainly a pigeon, be the wings 

 of what length or figure they will. 



Your singing-bird, mock-bird, or nightingale, is the 

 same which Hernandez, and out of him Nieremberg, 

 describe by the name of cenconthatoUi, and is common to 

 Virginia, described by Mr. Clayton in his letter to the 

 Royal Society, registered Philosoph. Transact. N. 206, 

 p. 993. 



Your Noddy, is the Passer sttdtus of Nieremberg, which 

 I suppose he took out of Oviedo, a book I am not ac- 

 quainted with. (See Willugh. Ornithol., Append.) Your 

 Long-legs seems to me to be the very same with the Euro- 

 pean Himantopus of Gesner and Aldrovand : (Willughby 

 Ornithol. p. 227), all notes agreeing. 



But I will trouble you with no more remarks by letters, 



