226 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER XLIX. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selhorne, May 7, 1779. 
It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention 
to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust 
the subject : new occurrences still arise as long as any enquiries 
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 himantopus, or 
loripeSy and charadrius himantopus, were 
shot upon the verge of Frinsham-pond, a 
large lake belonging to the bishop of Win- 
chester, 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 ^lack winged stiit. 
of the legs to be so extraordinary, 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 draughtsman. 
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 Vechasse. 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 four inches and a half. Hence we may safely 
assert that these birds exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably 
the greatest length of legs of any known bird. The flamingo, 
for instance, is one of the most long legged birds, and yet it 
bears no manner of proportion to the himantopus ; for a cock 
flamingo weighs, at an average, about four pounds avoirdupois ; 
and his legs and thighs measure usually about twenty inches. 
But four pounds are fifteen times and a fraction more than four 
