The person that shot it says that
it sung so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one; and that it
sings all night; but this account merits further inquiry. For my part,
I suspect it is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham
in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He also procured me a grasshopper-
lark.
(* For this salicaria see letter August 30, 1769.)
The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals
that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came there, and
whence? is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so obvious as
often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers
on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will
readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory
they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every
one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all
founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may
be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I
remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa and the
south of Europe; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged
over the Atlantic.
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