6o THE NATURAL HISTORY 



of the wings of a dusky brown, without those dark spots 

 of the grasshopper-lark ; over each eye is a milk-white 

 stroke ; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts 

 of a yellowish white ; the rump is tawny, and the feathers 

 of the tail sharp-pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, and 

 the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked." 

 The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed- 

 sparrow that he took it for one; and that it sings all night: 

 but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I 

 suspect it is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. 

 Derham, in Ray's Letters: see p. io8. He also procured 

 me a grasshopper-lark. 



The question that you put with regard to those genera 

 of animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came 

 there, and whence .'' is too puzzling for me to answer; and 

 yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. 

 If one looks into the writers on that subject little satisfac- 

 tion is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance 

 plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall 

 choose to maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every one's 

 hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all 

 founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in 

 whom may be seen all the arguments of those that have 

 gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western 

 coast of Africa and the south of Europe; and then break 

 down the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But 

 this is making use of a violent piece of machinery : it is a 

 difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god 1 '■'■ Incredulus 

 odi." 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. 



equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. Virg. Georo. 



When day declining sheds a milder gleam. 



What time the may-fly ^ haunts the pool or stream ; 



' The angler's may-fly, the efhemera vulgata Linn, comes forth from 

 its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, 



