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 oil.. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, Ishould 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, skulking 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 other side of the hedge where it haunted; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a 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. See Ray's Philosophical Letters, p. 108.
The fly-catcher (stoparola) 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 pease, cherries, currants, etc., 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:
Smallest willow-wren, Linnaei Nomina Motacilla trochilus.
Wryneck, Lynx torquilla.
House-swallow, Hirundo rustica.
Martin, Hirundo urbica.
Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia .
Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus.
Nightingale, Motacilla luscinia.
Black-cap, Motacilla atricapilla.
White-throat, Motacilla sylvia.
Middle willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus.
Swift, Hirundo apus.
Stone curlew?Charadrius oedicnemus?
Turtle-dove? Turtur aldrovandi?
Grasshopper-lark, Alauda trivialis.
Landrail, Rallus crex.
Largest willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus.
Redstart, Motacilla phoenicurus.
Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, Caprimulgus europaeus.
Fly-catcher, 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. Iprocured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta europaea (the nut-hatch). 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 a turkey? Some suspect it is made by their wings.
This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs lice a titmouse, with its back downwards.
Yours, etc., etc.
Letter XVII
To Thomas Pennant, EsquireSelborne, June 18, 1768.
Dear Sir,On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to reptiles and fishes.
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as Icould wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of animals, sometimes analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants: and the case is the same as regards some of the fishes: as the eel, etc.
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to me very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous:
and yet Ray classes them among his oviparous animals; and is silent with regard to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps they may be ' eso men ootokoi, exo de dzootokoi,(in Greek), as is known to be the case with the viper.
The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it; for Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to everybody: because we see them sticking upon each other's backs for a month together in spring: and yet I never saw, or read, of toads being observed in the same situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not yet been settled. That they are not noxious to some animals is plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country people stare; afterwards he drank oil.
I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time and died.
