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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. I1l5 
as to myself, I think I discover strong tokens of authenticity ; 
the style corresponds with that of his Entomology; and his 
characters of his Ordines and Genera are, many of them, new, 
expressive, and masterly. He has ventured to alter some of 
the Linnzan genera with sufficient show of reason. 
It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many 
swifts and no swallows at Staines, because, in my long obser- 
vation of those birds, I never could discover the least degree 
of rivalry or hostility between the species. 
Ray remarks that birds of the Ga//ine order, as cocks and 
hens, partridges, and pheasants, etc., are pulveratrices, such as 
dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, 
and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can 
observe, many birds that dust themselves never wash; and I 
“once thought that those birds that wash themselves would 
never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common 
house-sparrows are great fulveratrices, being frequently seen 
grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are 
great washers. Does not the skylark dust? 
Query. — Might not Mahomet and his followers take one 
method of purification from these pu/veratrices ? because I find 
from travellers of credit, that if a strict Mussulman is journey- 
ing in a sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated 
hours he strips off 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 tit- 
lark; it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing “in 
sitting there, to have its large wings stretched out beyond the 
nest,”’ and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, 
as I teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and 
buffeting with its wings like a game-cock. ‘The dupe of a dam 
