82 
NATUEAL HISTORY 
to the description of that species which you shot at Revesby, 
in Lincolnshire/ My bird I describe thus : " It is a size 
less than the grasshopper lark ; the head, back, and coverts 
of the wings, of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of 
the grasshopper lark ; over each eye is a milkwhite stroke ; 
the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a 
yellowish white ; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the 
tail sharp pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs 
are dusky ; the hinder claw long and crooked/''^ The per- 
son that shot it says that it sung so like a reed sparrow that 
he took it for one ; and that it sings all night : but this 
account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it 
is a second sort of Locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in 
Ray's Letters;" see p. 108. He also procured me a 
grasshopper lark. 
The question that you put with regard to those genera of 
animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came 
there, and whence ? is too puzzling for me to answer ; and 
yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If 
one looks into the writers on that subject, little satisfaction 
is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausi- 
ble arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose 
to maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypo- 
thesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded 
on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may 
be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, 
as I remember, stock America from the western coast of 
Africa, and the south of Europe ; and then break down the 
isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making 
use of a violent piece of machinery ; it is a diflBculty worthy 
of the interposition of a god ! Incredulus odiJ' 
sihilatrix. But here he extends the term to include the sedge warblers, 
which really belong to a well marked and very distinct group. — Ed. 
^ The seat of Sir Joseph Banks, where Pennant was staying on a visit 
in May, 1767. — Ed. 
2 This is the sedge warbler, Salicaria phragmitis. The remark of 
White's informant that the bird he procured " sung so like a reed sparrow" 
is a mistake which a casual observer might easily make, since the sedge 
warbler often sings concealed in a patch of reeds or sedge, while the un- 
musical reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus), sitting conspicuously on a 
feed top, gets all the credit for the song. — ^Ed. 
