64 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
same division. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of 
ponds and rivers where there is covert, and the reeds and 
sedges of moors. The country people in some places call it 
the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night and day during the 
breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a 
skylark ; and has a strange hurrying manner in its song. My 
specimens correspond most minutely to the description of 
your fen saZcaria shot near Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an 
excellent characteristic of it when he says: “The beak and 
the feet of this little bird are much too large in proportion to 
its body.” 
I have got you the egg of a stone-curlew, which was picked 
up in a fallow on the naked ground; there were two, but 
the finder inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he 
saw them. 
LETTER XXVI. 
SELBORNE, December 8th, 1760. 
I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your 
return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable 
time and gave yourself good room to examine the natural 
curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, 
as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such 
expeditions is hurry, because men seldom allot themselves half 
the time they should do ; but, fixing on a day for their return, 
post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey 
that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the 
works of nature. You must have made, no doubt, many dis- 
coveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future 
edition of the Avritish Zodlogy; and will have no reason to 
repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part of 
Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before. 
