112 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
once thought that those birds that wash themselves would 
never dust ; but here I find myself mistaken ; for common 
house-sparrows are great imlvcratrices, being frequently seen 
grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great 
washers. Does not the skylark dust ? 
Query. — Might not ^lahomet and his followers take one 
method of purification from these ^oulveratrices^ because I find, 
from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journey- 
ing in a sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated 
hours he strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his 
body over with sand or dust. 
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl 
in the nest of a small bird on the ground; and that it was fed 
by the little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, 
and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a 
titlark : it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 
" to have its large wings extended beyond the nest/' — 
" — — — — - — in tenui re 
Majores pennas nido exteiidisse — — " 
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 
teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting 
with its wings like a gamecock. The dupe of a dam appeared 
at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and 
expressing the greatest solicitude. 
In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; 
and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 
libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they 
settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. ISTot- 
withstanding what Linnseus says, I cannot be induced to believe 
that they are birds of prey. 
This district affords some birds that are hardly ever heard of 
at Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks 
{Loxim cnrvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine- 
groves belonging to this house : the water-ousel is said to haunt 
the mouth of the Lewxs river, near ISTewhaven ; and the Cornish 
chough builds, I know, all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex 
shore. 
