86 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
it. It is no imcommoii 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, imi- 
tating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a skylark, and has a 
strange hurrying manner in its song. My specimens correspond 
most minutely to the description of your feu-salicaria shot near 
Eevesby. Mr. Eay has given an excellent characteristic of it 
when he says, — Bostrum et pedes in liclc aviculd multb majores 
sunt qiiam pro coiyoris rationed " The beak and feet of tliis 
little bird are much too large for its body." 
I have got you the egg of an oeclicnenms, or stone-curlew, 
which was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground : there 
were two ; but the finder inadvertently crashed 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 have of stinking to 
defend themselves, se dffendenclo. I knew a gentleman who 
kept a tame snake, which was in its person as sweet as any 
animal while in good humour and unalarmed ; but as soon as a 
stranger, or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled the 
room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly sup- 
portable. Thus the skunck, or stonck, of Eay's Synop. Quadr., 
is an innocuous and sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by 
dogs and men, it can eject such a most pestilent and fetid smell 
and excrement, than which nothing can be more horrible. 
A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the Lanius 
ininoT cinerascens cum macidd in scajmlis cdha, Eaii ; which is a 
bird that, at the time of your publishing your two first volumes 
of British Zoology, I find you had not seen. You have described 
it well from Edwards's drawing. 
Selhorne, Aug. 30, 1769. 
