322 SYLVIADA. 
ash grey and light brown. The eggs in number are four 
or five; and Mr. Jenyns has remarked that incubation 
commences about the 20th of May. 
The Lesser Whitethroat is by no means an uncommon 
bird around London, but is observed to be much more 
plentiful in some seasons than it is in others. South and 
west of London it visits Hampshire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, 
Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire; is rare in Cornwall 
and Wales, and has not, I believe, been identified as a 
visitor to Ireland. It frequents Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, 
Norfolk, the enclosed parts of Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, 
Yorkshire, and Durham, in which latter county it fre- 
quents strong and thick whin or furze-bushes. Farther 
north m Northumberland it becomes more rare, according 
to Mr. Selby ; but extends, though probably in still more 
limited numbers, to Scotland. Mr. Rennie, who appears 
to be well acquainted with this bird, mentions having seen 
it at Musselburgh Haugh, near Edinburgh, and also in 
Ayrshire. It visits Denmark, and arrives in Sweden by 
the 20th of May; it also visits the southern part of Russia, 
as well as the more temperate and warmer parts of the 
Kuropean Continent, including Spain and Portugal, but 
quits them, and even Genoa and Italy, in September. It 
is common in Sicily and in Egypt. M. 'Temminck says, it 
is abundant in Asia; and Colonel Sykes obtained examples 
in the Dukkun, which only differed from some English spe- 
cimens in having a reddish tint on the white of the under 
surface ; but Mr. Blyth mentions, in some remarks on this 
species in the Naturalist, and also in a note to an edition of 
White’s Selborne, that he has seen this rosy tint on speci- 
mens obtained in this country ; I may here also quote in 
corroboration, part of a letter received from my kind friend 
the Rev. W. F. Cornish of Totness, who is very successful 
