46 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
sculk among the stones, which are their best security; for 
their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our grey spotted 
flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of 
the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round ; 
of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody botches. Though I 
might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, 
yet I could shew you them almost any day ; and any evening you 
may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which 
may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive 
name for them, since their legs seem swoln like those of a gouty man. 
After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.* 
I make no doubt but there are three 
species of the willow-wrens : two I 
know perfectly; but have not been 
able yet to procure the third. No 
two birds can differ more in their 
notes, and that constantly, than those 
two that I am acquainted with; for 
the one has a joyous, easy, laughing 
note ; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way 
larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two 
drams and a half ; while the latter weighs but two : so the 
songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being 
the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck 
sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, 
and continues them through the spring and summer till the end 
of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of 
these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less, black. 
The grasshopper-lark began his 
sibilous note in my fields last Satur- 
day. Nothing can be more amusing 
than the whisper of this little bird, 
which seems to be close by though at 
a hundred yards distance ; and, when 
close at your ear, is scarce any louder 
than when a great way off. Had I 
not been a little acquainted with in- Brake Locusteiie. 
* It is only the young of the year which have the upper part of the tarse so much swollen, as 
is the case indeed with the young of all running birds. This species is very rarely found except- 
ing on chalk, though I know of one instance of an immature bird having been shot on the "New 
red sand-stone" stratum, in Worcestershire, which, from its youth, must evidently have been bred 
in the neighbourhood. In Srrrey they occur every where upon the chalky lands ; I have had 
specimens from Banstiad downs. — Ed. 
