OF SELBOENE, 
LETTER XLIX. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selbobne, May 7, 1779. 
T is now more tlian forty years that I have 
paid some attention to the ornithology of 
this district, without being able to exhaust 
the subject : new occurrences stiU arise as 
long as any inquiries are kept alive. 
In the last week of last month five of those most rare 
birds, too uncommon to have obtained an English name, 
but known to naturalists by the terms of HimantopuSj or 
LoripeSj and Charadrius HimantopuSj^ were shot upon the 
verge of Frinsham Pond, a large lake belonging to the 
Bishop of Winchester, and lying between Wolmer Forest 
and the town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The 
pond-keeper says there were three brace in the flock ; but 
that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the 
sixth to remain unmolested. One of these specimens I 
procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extra- 
ordinary, that, at first sight, one might have supposed the 
shanks had been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the 
beholder: they were legs in caricatura ; and had we seen 
such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen we should 
have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughts- 
man. These birds are of the plover family, and might with 
propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that 
idea, gives them the apposite name of L'Echasse. My 
specimen, when drawn and stuffed with pepper, weighed 
only four ounces and a quarter ; though the naked part of 
the thigh measured three inches and a half, and the legs 
^ Himantopus candidus, Jionnsitcrre ; If. melanopierus, Temminck. In 
the first edition of the present work, which ajipeared in quarto in 1789, 
amongst other illustrations is a fnll-page one of this singular-looking 
bird. — Ed. 
