THE WHEATEAR ON THE SOUTH 

 DOWNS 



Amongst the good things of Sussex enumerated 

 by John Ray in his English Proverbs (ed. 17^2, 

 p. 262), we find mention made of a " Bourn 

 Wheatear." The usually accepted version credits 

 Sussex with the production of four delicacies, 

 which, according to Izaak Walton, were stated to 

 be, in 1653, a Selsea cockle, a Chichester lobster, 

 an Arundel mullet, and an Amberley trout. Ray, 

 however, enumerates seven, the other three being 

 a Pulborough eel, a Rye herring, and a Bourn 

 Wheatear, which he says "are the best in their 

 kind, understand it of those that are taken in this 

 country." By a "Bourn Wheatear" we are to 

 understand a Wheatear taken on the downs near 

 Eastbourne by a device, presently to be described, 

 which was much in vogue with the Southdown 

 shepherds at the end of the eighteenth and begin- 

 ning of the nineteenth century. 



" Wheatears " says Fuller, writing of Sussex, in 

 1662, somewhat before the publication of Ray's 

 Proverbs, "is a bird peculiar to this county — 

 hardly found out of it. It is so called because 

 fattest when wheat is ripe, whereon it feeds ; being 

 no bigger than a Lark, which it equalleth in the 



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