swallows, at least after the young have flown, ap- 

 pear to pass the night in the vicinity of streams. 

 White noticed also — and here the true observer 

 again crops out — that the fieldfare, a kind of thrush, 

 though a tree-builder, yet always appears to pass 

 the night on the ground. The larkers, in drag- 

 ging their nets by night, frequently catch them in 

 the wheat stubbles." He learned, as every observer 

 sooner or later learns, to be careful of sweeping 

 statements — that the truth of nature is not always 

 caught by the biggest generalisations. After speak- 

 ing of the birds that dust themselves, earth their 

 plumage — piilveratrices^ as he calls them — he says : 

 As far as I can observe, many birds that dust 

 themselves never wash, and I once thought that 

 those birds that wash themselves would never dust ; 

 but here I find myself mistaken," and instances the 

 house sparrow as doing both. White seems to have 

 been about the first writer upon natural history who 

 observed things minutely ; he saw through all those 

 sort of sleight-o'-hand movements and ways of the 

 birds and beasts. He held his eye firmly to the 

 point. He saw the swallows feed their young on the 

 wing ; he saw the fern-owl while hawking about a 

 large oak put out its short leg while on the wing, 

 and by a bend of the head deliver something into 

 its mouth." This explained to him the use of its 

 middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a ser- 

 rated claw." He times the white owls feeding their 



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