2 8 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



fineness of the flesh, and far exceedeth in the fatness 

 thereof The worst is, that being only seasonable 

 in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with 

 lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that 

 (though abounding within forty miles) London 

 poulterers have no mind to meddle with them, 

 which no care in carriage can keep from putrefac- 

 tion. That palate-man ^ shall pass in silence who, 

 being seriously demanded his judgment concerning 

 the abilities of a great lord, concluded him a man 

 of very weak parts because he saw him at a great 

 feast feed on Chickens when there were Wheatears 

 on the table." — Worthies of England, vol. ii. p. 382. 



This account, having been written more than 

 two centuries ago, when little or nothing was known 

 of the habits of our migratory birds, is, as might be 

 expected, not altogether free from errors. In sup- 

 posing the Wheatear to be hardly found out of the 

 county of Sussex, Fuller seems to have considered 

 it a resident species, whereas, as we now know, it 

 is a summer migrant, arriving towards the end of 

 March, and departing in September. His state- 

 ment that it feeds on wheat must have been a pure 

 conjecture, arising from a guess at the meaning of 

 its name, for, so far from being found in the neigh- 

 bourhood of cornfields, its haunts are on the wide, 

 open downs, fallow fields, and sandy warrens, where 

 its diet consists of insects and their larvae, and small 

 thin-shelled mollusca. 



The suggestion that the Wheatear is so called 

 "because fattest when wheat is ripe" sounds 

 1 Cf. Willughby, Ornithology, 1678, s.v. "Partridge." 



