NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
103 
wash themselves would never dust ; but here I find myself mistaken ; 
for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequently 
seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great 
washers. Does not the skylark dust 1 * ^ 
Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method of j 
purification from these pulveratrices 1 because I find from travellers of 
credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journeying in a sandy desert where . 
no water is to be found, at stated hours he strips olF 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 
in tenui re 
Majores pennas nido extendisse 
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it 
for many feet from the ^nest, and sparring and bufi*etting with its 
wings like a game-cock. 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 Libellulos, 
or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they settled on the 
weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Notwithstanding 
what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe that they are birds 
of prey. 
This district afibrds some birds that are hardly ever heard of at 
Selborne. In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks {Loxice 
curvirostrce) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging 
to this house ; the water- ousel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes 
river, near Newhaven ; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all 
along the chalky cliflfs of the Sussex shore. 
I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ousels (my newly 
discovered migraters) scattered, at intervals, all along the Sussex downs, 
from Chichester to Lewes. Let them come from whence they will, it 
looks very suspicious that they are cantoned along the coast in order 
to pass the channel when severe weather advances. They visit us again 
in April, as it should seem, in their return ; and are not to be found in 
the dead of winter. It is remarkable that they are very tame, and 
seem to have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a person 
with a gun. There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelm- 
stone. No doubt you are acquainted with the Sussex downs; the 
prospects and rides round Lewes are most lovely ! 
As I rode along near the coast I kept a very sharp look-out in the 
lanes and woods, hoping I might, at this time of the year, have 
discovered some of the summer short-winged birds of passage 
* The skylark does dust. 
