214 THE: NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
maws, there seems to be good reason to suppose that this and 
the two former species ruminate or chew the cud like many 
quadrupeds ! 3 
LETTER XLIV. 
SELBORNE, May 7th, 1779. 
It is now more than forty years that I have paid some atten- 
tion to the ornithology of this district, without being able to 
exhaust the subject : new occurrences still arise as long as any 
inquiries 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 A/zmantopus, or Loripes, and 
Charadrius himantopus, were shot upon the verge of Frinsham 
Pond, a large lake belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, 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 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 /échasse. 
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 
