48 
NATURAL HISTORY 
winter. Quails crowd to our southern coast, and are often 
killed in numbers by people that go on purpose. 
Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says that, if the wheat- 
ear {(Enanthe)^ does not quit England, it certainly shifts 
places ; for about harvest they are not to be found, where 
WHEATEAR. 
there was before great plenty of them.^' This well accounts 
for the vast quantities that are caught about that time on 
the South Downs near Lewes, where they are esteemed a 
delicacy. There have been shepherds, I have been credibly 
^ Saxicola cenanthe (Linn.) The popular name " wheatear " appears to 
have been originally local and confined to the South Downs. Elsewhere 
it is called " fallow -chat " and " white -tail." Willughby, referring to 
this bird, calls it " the fallow-smick, in Sussex the wheatear, because 
the time of wheat-harvest they wax very fat." Many other derivations 
of the name, however, have been suggested, amongst others the follow- 
ing is perhaps as plausible as any. Those who are acquainted with 
the wheatear, know that the basal half of the tail is white, and that as 
the bird moves, this white patch is very conspicuous. "Wheat" may 
easily be a corruption of " whit" or " white," and as regards the "ear," 
if we affix the " e " instead of prefixing it, and insert a penultimate 
letter, we have the substantive by which our Saxon forefathers would 
have described that portion of the anatomy which is white. This view 
receives some support from the spelling adopted by the earlier English 
writers (c/. Chaucer's "Miller's Tale"), and Mr. Bennett has sug- 
gested that " Hwitaers " may possibly have been its Saxon name. In 
France to this day the bird is called " cul-blanc." — Ed. 
