THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Sew 
note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of 
watchword, that they may not stray and lose their companions. 
Thus, we see, that retire whithersoever they may in the 
winter, they return again early in the spring, and are, as it 
now appears, the first summer birds that come back. Perhaps 
the mildness of the season may have quickened the migration 
of the curlews this year. 
They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheepwalks; 
but seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, 
perhaps for water, which their upland haunts do not afford 
them. — Odservations on Nature. | 
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-colored; of the less, black. 
The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields 
last Saturday. 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 insects, and known that the grasshopper 
_kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but 
that it had been a J/ocusta whispering in the bushes. The 
country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of 
