reason probably was, because it is so strangely 

 classed in Ray, who ranges it among his Pici ajjiiies. 

 It ought no doubt to have gone among his small 

 birds with the tail of one colour (Aviciilce cmidd U7ii- 

 colore), and among your slender-billed birds of the 

 same division. Linn^us might, with great propriety, 

 have put it into his genus of motacilla, and the Mo- 

 tacilla salicaria of his " Fauna Suecica " seems to come 

 the nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting 

 the sides of ponds and rivers where there is covert, 

 and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country 

 people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings 

 incessantly night and day during the breeding time, 

 imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a sky- 

 lark, and has a strange hurrying manner in its song. 

 My specimens correspond most minutely to the de- 

 scription of your {^xi- salicaria shot near Revesby. 

 Mr. Ray has given an excellent characteristic of it 

 when he sa\^s, — ''Rostrum et pedes i?i lidc aviculd vmlto 

 uiajores stint quavi pro corporis rationed '' The beak 

 and feet of this little bird are much too large for its 

 body.'' 



I have got you the egg of an oedicnenms, or stone- 

 curlew, which was picked up in a fallow on the 

 naked ground : there were two ; but the finder in- 

 advertently crushed one with his foot before he saw 

 them. 



When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish 



I had not forgot to mention the faculty that snakes 

 lo 107 



