thrush kind that searched it
out. The root of the _arum_ is remarkably warm and pungent.

Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The
blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather
in January.

In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird
that raised my curiosity: it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs
to the _salicaria_ kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no
_parus_; and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren,
appearing most like the largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its
back downwards, 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 champaign
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, "_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. Linnaeus perhaps
would call the species _Mus minimus_.

LETTER XVI.

SELBORNE, _April 18th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--The 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from the egg like partridges, etc., and are withdrawn to some flinty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
grey-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 w