50 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before 
me, and can discern that there are three gradations of sizes, 
and that the least has black legs, and the other two flesh- 
colored ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, 
and has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with 
white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the 
tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous 
grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shiver- 
ing a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no 
doubt now, the Regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says 
“sings with the stridulous voice of a grasshopper.” Yet this 
great ornithologist never suspected that there were three 
species. 
LETTER XX. 
SELBORNE, October 8th, 1768. 
It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany; all nature is so full 
that that district produces the greatest variety which is the 
most examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the 
north only, are it seems often in the south. I have discovered 
this summer three species of birds with us, which writers men- 
tion as only to_be seen in the northern counties. ‘The first 
that was brought me (on the 14th May), was the sandpiper: 
it was a cockbird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near 
the village ; and, as it had a companion, doubtless intended to 
have bred near that water. Besides, the owner has told me 
since, that on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds 
round his ponds in former summers. 
The next bird that I procured (on the 21st May) was a male 
red-backed butcher bird. My neighbor, who shot it, says that 
! Doubtless the wood-wren. 
