but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.

I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the campaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, dwellers about streams or ponds, circa aquas versantes; for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep walks, far removed from water: what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs.

I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnæus perhaps would call the species mus minimus.

been killed at Alton. They are active little creatures, erecting the crest and tail, flying in a short jerking manner, and seizing small insects on the wing. It also feeds whilst flying, suspending itself with back and head down, as described in the text.-ED.

HE history of the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than

three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field; so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our gray spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round; of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.

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-coloured; 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 an 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 locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, sculking in the thickest part of a bush; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the

The yellow Wood-wren, Sylvia sibilatrix, the willow Wood wren, Motacilla trochilus, and the Chiff-chaff, or shortwinged Wood-wren, Sylvia hippolais, are three well-established species.-ED.

other side of the hedge where it haunted; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for an hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns; yet it would not come into fair sight: but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings. Mr. Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct.

The fly-catcher (stoparola, Ray) has not yet appeared: it usually breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, cherries, and currants, and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.*

A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the Order in which they appear:

Linnæi Nomina.
Motacilla trochilus:
Junx torquilla:
Hirundo rustica:
Chelidon urbica:

Cotile riparia:
Cuculus canorus:

Luscinia philomela:

Motacilla atricapilla:

Motacilla sylvia:

Motacilla trochilus:

Hirundo apus:

Charadrius oedicnemus?

Turtur aldrovandi?

Alauda trivialis:

Rallus crex:

Motacilla trochilus:
Motacilla phænicurus:
Caprimulgus europaus:
Muscicapa grisola.

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the nuthatch, (sitta europaa.) Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker does the same.' This noise may be

heard a furlong or more.

Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion there is no distinction of genus, species, or

sex.

In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and humming: they always hum as they are descending. Is not their hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey? Some suspect it is made by their wings.

This morning I saw the golden-crown wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, with its back downwards.

SELBORNE, April 18, 1768.

A most interesting bird, which remains with us the whole year, chiefly haunting parks and places where old elm and oak trees are found; they feed in small families of five or six individuals, and are invariably found on the lee side of the tree, changing their position as the wind changes.ED.