OF SELBORNE 51 



expressive name for them, since their legs seem swoln 

 like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot 

 them before the pointers in turnip-fields. 



I make no doubt but there are three species of the 

 willow-wrens : two I know perfectly ; but have not been 

 able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ 

 more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two 

 that I am acquainted with ; for the one has a joyous, 

 easy, laughing note ; the other a harsh loud chirp. The 

 former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch 

 longer, and weighs two drams and a half ; while the 

 latter weighs but two : so the songster is one-fifth heavier 

 than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer- 

 bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes 

 excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, 

 and continues them through the spring and summer till 

 the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs 

 of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less, 

 black. 



The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my 

 fields last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing 

 than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be 

 close by though at an hundred yards distance ; and, 

 when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when a 

 great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with 

 insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 

 hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had 

 been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country 

 people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a 

 bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest 

 part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard distance, provided 

 it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on 

 the other side of the hedge where it haunted ; and then 

 it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a 

 hundred yards together, through the bottom of the 



