XVI.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
51 
may be eluded. The eggs are short and round ; of a dirty white, 
spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I miglit not be able, 
just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you 
them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them 
round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard 
a mile. Ocdicncmus is a most apt and expressive name for them, 
since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After 
harvest I have sliot them before the pointers in turnip-tields. 
I make no doubt but there are tliree species of the willow- 
wrens ; two I know perfectly : but have not been able yet to 
procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, 
and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with ; 
for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note ; the other a harsh 
loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters 
of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half, while the 
latter weighs but two ; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than 
the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage 
that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two 
notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the 
spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my 
journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured ; 
of the less, black. 
The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last 
Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 
this little bird, which seems to be close by though at a hundred 
yards distance ; and when close at your ear is scarce any louder 
than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted 
with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 
hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a 
locnsia whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh 
when you tell them that it is the note ol' a l.urd. It is a most 
nuthatch's egg. 
rjoLDKN-CROWNED WREN's K(,;G. 
