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I am, etc.
(*The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn., comes forth
from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the
evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its
fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear
about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a
fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc.)
(** Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no
incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it
wanders without control.)
(*** Charadrius aedicnemus.)
(**** Gryllus campetris.)
(***** In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height,
and hang singing in the air.
(****** The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up
the stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to
the male, which is a slender dusky scarabaeus.)
(******* See the story of Hero and Leander.)

Letter XXV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Aug. 30, 1769.

Dear Sir,

It gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the ousel
migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd question when you
ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is southward?
Was not candour and openness the very life of natural history, I
should pass over this query just as the sly commentator does over a
crabbed passage in a classic; but common ingenuousness obliges
me to confess, not without some degree of shame, that I only
reasoned in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds
migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder winters,
and return to the northward again when the rigorous cold abates, so
I concluded that the ring-ousels did the same, as well as their
congeners the fieldfares; and especially as ring-ousels are known to
haunt cold mountainous countries: but I have good reason to
suspect since that they may come to us from westward; because I
hear, from very good authority, that they breed on Dartmoor; and
that they forsake that wild district about the time that our visitors
appear, and do not return till late in the spring.

I have taken a great deal of pains about your salicaria and mine,
with a white stroke over its eye, and a tawny rump. I have surveyed
it alive and dead, and have procured several specimens; and am
perfectly persuaded myself (and trust you will soon be convinced
of the same) that it is no more nor less than the passer
arundinaceus minor of Ray. This bird, by some means or other,
seems to be entirely omitted in the British Zoology; and one reason
probably was because it is so strangely classed in Ray, who ranges
it among his picis affines. It ought no doubt to have gone among
his aviculae cauda unicolore, and among your slender-billed small
birds of the same division. Linnaeus might with great propriety
have put it into his genus of motacilla; and the motacilla salicaria
of his Fauna Suecica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no
uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers where there
is covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country people in
some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night and day
during the breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a
swallow, a sky-lark; and has a strange hurrying manner in its song.
My specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your
fen salicaria, shot near Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an excellent
characteristic of it when he says, 'Rostrum & pedes in hac avicula
multo majores sunt quam pro corporis ratione.' See letter May 29,
1769.

I have got you the egg of an oedicnemus, or stone curlew, which
was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground: There were two;
but the fender inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he
saw them.

When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had not forgot to
mention the faculty that snakes have of stinking se defendendo. I
knew a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which was in its person
as sweet as any animal while in a good humour and unalarmed; but
as soon as a stranger or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and
filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly
supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray's Synop. Ouadr. is
an innocuous and sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by dogs
and men, it can eject such a pestilent and fetid smell and
excrement, that nodding can be more horrible.

A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the lanius minor
cinerascens cum macula in scapulis alba Raii; which is a bird that,
at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of British
Zoology, I find you had not seen. You have described it well from
Edwards's drawing.

Letter XXVI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, December 8, 1769.

Dear Sir,

I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your return
from Scotland, where you spent, I find, some considerable time,
and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of
that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those
of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry;
because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do:
but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather
as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, than as
philosophers investigating the works of nature. You must have
made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a good fund of
materials for a future edition of the British Zoology; and will have
no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part
of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before.

It has always been matter of wonder to me that field-fares, which
are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose
to breed in England: but that they should not think even the
highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a
circumstance still more strange and wonderful.. The ring-ousel,
you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round; so that we have
reason to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short
space every autumn do not come from thence.

And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that those
birds were most punctual again in their migration this autumn,
appearing, as before, about the 30th of September: but their flocks
were larger than common, and their stay protracted somewhat
beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the whole winter with
us, as some of their congeners do, and then left us, as they do, in
spring, I should not be so much struck with the occurrence, since it
would be similar to that of the other winter birds of passage; but
when I see them for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for about
a week in the middle of April, I am seized with wonder, and long
to be informed whence these travellers come, and whither they go,
since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or baiting place.

Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very
amusing; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should
delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean! Some
country people in the winter time have every now and then told me
that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs; but on
considering the matter, I begin to suspect that these are some
stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes perhaps
may rove so far to the southward.

It pleases me to find that white hares are so frequent on the
Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that it is a
distinct species; for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that every
new species is a great acquisition.

The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so majestic a
bird that it would grace our fauna much. I never was informed
before where wild-geese are known to breed.

You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria to be the
lesser reed-sparrow of Ray; and I think that you may be secure that
I am right; for I took very particular pains to clear up that matter,
and had some fair specimens; but, as they were not well preserved,
they are decayed already. You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper
place in your next edition. Your additional plates will much
improve your work.

De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse: but still I
am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, for the
reason I have given in the article on the white hare.

As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry chalky field, far
removed from any water, he turned out a water rat, that was
curiously laid up in an hybernaculum artificially formed of grass
and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes
regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the
winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came
to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it
determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of
finding the potatoes which were planted there; or is it the constant
practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the
water in the colder months?

Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how
fallacious it is with respect to natural history; yet, in the following
instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce
towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned
before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the hirundo
apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners; and that not
only with us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire
about the beginning of August.

The great large bat* (which by the by is at present a nondescript in
England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires
and migrates very early in the summer: it also ranges very high for
its food, feeding in a different region of the air; and that is the
reason I never could procure one. Now this is exactly the case with
the swifts; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the
other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the
ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would
conclude that these hirundines, and the larger bats, are supported
by some sorts of high-flying gnats, scarabs, or phalaenae, that are
of short continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is
regulated by the defect of their food.
(* The little bat appears almost every month in the year; but I have
never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They
are most common in June, but never in any plenty; are a rare
species with us.)

By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the
thirty-first; since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows
were observed on to November the third.

Letter XXVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770.

Dear Sir,

Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which
they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very
curious: with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their
lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards,
leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are
serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they
deface the waffles in some measure by digging little round holes. It
appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are
no inconsiderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter
of four or five young hedge-hogs, which appeared to be about five
or six days old; they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, and could
not see when they came to my hands. No doubt their spines are soft
and flexible at the time of their birth, or else the poor dam would
have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of parturition: but it
is plain that they soon harden; for these little pigs had such stiff
prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched
blood, had they not been handled with caution. Their spines are
quite white at this age; and they have little hanging ears, which I do
not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in part,
at this age draw their skin down over their faces; but are not able to
contract themselves into a ball as they do, for the sake of defence,
when full grown. The reason, I suppose, is, because the curious
muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up into a ball was not
then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedge-hogs make a deep
and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they
conceal themselves for the winter: but I never could find that they
stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.

I have discovered an anecdote with respect to the field-fare (turdus
pilaris), which I think is particular enough: this bird, though it sits
on trees in the day-time, and procures the greatest part of its food
from white-thorn hedges; yea, moreover, builds on very high trees;
as may be seen by the Fauna Suecica; yet always appears with us to
roost on the ground. They are seen to come in flocks just before it
is dark, and to settle and nestle among the heath on our forest. And
besides, the larkers, in dragging their nets by night, frequently
catch them in the wheat-stubbles; while the bat-fowlers, who take
many red-wings in the hedges, never entangle any of this species.
Why these birds, in the matter of roosting, should differ from all
their congeners, and from themselves also with respect to their
proceedings by day, is a fact for which I am by no means able to
account.

I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the moose-deer; but
in general foreign animals fall seldom in my way; my little
intelligence is confined to the narrow sphere of my own
observations at home.

Letter XXVIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, March, 1770.

On Michaelmas-day 1768 I managed to get a sight of the female
moose belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood; but was
greatly disappointed, when I arrived at the spot, to find that it died,
after having appeared in a languishing way for some time, on the
morning before. However, understanding that it was not stripped, I
proceeded to examine this rare quadruped: I found it in an old
green-house, slung under the belly and chin by ropes, and in a
standing posture; but, though it had been dead for so short a time, it
was in so putrid a state that the stench was hardly supportable. The
grand distinction between this deer, and any other species that I
have ever met with, consisted in the strange length of its legs; on
which it was tilted up much in the manner of birds of the grallae
order. I measured it, as they do an horse, and found that, from the
ground to the wither, it was just five feet four inches; which height
answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth that few horses arrive
at: but then, with this length of legs, its neck was remarkably short,
no more than twelve inches; so that, by straddling with one foot
forward and the other backward, it grazed on the plain ground,
with the greatest difficulty, between its legs: the ears were vast and
lopping, and as long as the neck; the head was about twenty inches
long, and ass-like; and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I
never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is
esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is very reasonable to
suppose that this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of
trees, and by wading after water-plants; towards which way of
livelihood the length of leg and great lip must contribute much. I
have read somewhere that it delights in eating the nymphaea, or
water-lily. From the fore-feet to the belly behind the shoulder it
measured three feet and eight inches: the length of the legs before
and behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was strangely
long; but in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure
that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; the
colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four inches long; the
fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The
spring before it was only two years old, so that most probably it
was not then come to its growth. What a vast tall beast must a full-
grown stag be! I have been told some arrive at ten feet and an half!
This poor creature had at first a female companion of the same
species, which died the spring before. In the same garden was a
young stag, or red deer, between whom and this moose it was
hoped that there might have been a breed; but their inequality of
height must have always been a bar to any commerce of the
amorous kind. I should have been glad to have examined the teeth,
tongue, lips, hoofs, etc., minutely; but the putrefaction precluded
all further curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to
enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. In the
house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which had no
front-antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags on the edge.
The noble owner of the dead moose proposed to make a skeleton
of her bones.

Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with that
you saw; and whether you think still that the American moose and
European elk are the same creature.

I am,

With the greatest esteem. etc.

Letter XXIX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, May 12, 1770.

Dear Sir,

Last month we had such a series of cold turbulent weather, such a
constant succession of frost, and snow, and hail, and tempest, that
the regular migration or appearance of the summer birds was much
interrupted. Some did not show themselves (at least were not
heard) till weeks after their usual time; as the black-cap and white-
throat; and some have not been heard yet, as the grasshopper-lark
and largest willow-wren. As to the fly-catcher, I have not seen it; it
is indeed one of the latest, but should appear about this time: and
yet, amidst all this meteorous strife and war of the elements, two
swallows discovered themselves as long ago as the eleventh of
April, in frost and snow; but they withdrew quickly, and were not
visible again for many days. House-martins, which are always more
backward than swallows, were not observed till May came in.

Among the monogamous birds several are to be found, after
pairing-time, single, and of each sex: but whether this state of
celibacy is matter of choice or necessity, is not so easily
discoverable. When the house-sparrows deprive my martins of
their nests, as soon as I cause one to be shot, the other, be it cock or
hen, presently procures a mate, and so for several times following.

I have known a dove-house infested by a pair of white owls, which
made great havoc among the young pigeons: one of the owls was
shot as soon as possible; but the survivor readily found a mate, and
the mischief went on. After some time the new pair were both
destroyed, and the annoyance ceased.

Another instance I remember of a sportsman, whose zeal for the
increase of his game being greater than his humanity, after pairing-
time he always shot the cock-bird of every couple of partridges
upon his grounds; supposing that the rivalry of many males
interrupted the breed: he used to say, that, though he had widowed
the same hen several times, yet he found she was still provided
with a fresh paramour, that did not take her away from her usual
haunt.

Again; I knew a lover of setting, an old sportsman, who has often
told me that soon after harvest he has frequently taken small
coveys of partridges, consisting of cock-birds alone; these he
pleasantly used to call old bachelors.

There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is very
remarkable; I mean their violent fondness for fish, which appears
to be their most favourite food: and yet nature in this instance
seems to have planted in them an appetite that, unassisted, they
know not how to gratify: for of all quadrupeds cats are the least
disposed towards water; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign
to wet a foot, much less to plunge into that element.

Quadrupeds that prey on fish are amphibious: such is the otter,
which by nature is so well formed for diving, that it makes great
havoc among the inhabitants of the waters. Not supposing that we
had any of those beasts in our shadow brooks, I was much pleased
to see a male otter brought to me, weighing twenty-one pounds,
that had been shot on the bank of our stream below the Priory,
where the rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from Harteley-
wood.

Letter XXX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Aug. 1, 1770.

Dear Sir,

The French, I think, in general, are strangely prolix in their natural
history. What Linnaeus says with respect to insects holds good in
every other branch: 'Verbositas praesentis saeculi, calamitas artis.'

Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work? As I admire his
Entomologia, I long to see it.

I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not room to insert in
the former) that the male moose, in rutting time, swims from island
to island, in the lakes and rivers of North America, in pursuit of the
females. My friend, the chaplain, saw one killed in the water as it
was on that errand in the river St. Lawrence: it was a monstrous
beast, he told me; but he did not take the dimensions.

When I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington most obligingly
carried me to see many curious sights. As you were then writing to
him about horns, he carried me to see many strange and wonderful
specimens. There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, an
horn room furnished with more than thirty different pairs; but I
have not seen that house lately.

Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed
and living birds from all quarters of the world. After I had studied
over the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that
came from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of
Guinea, etc., were thick-billed birds of the loxia and fringilla
genera; and no motacillae, or muscicapae, were to be met with.
When I came to consider, the reason was obvious enough; for the
hard-billed birds subsist on seeds, which are easily carried on
board; while the soft-billed birds, which are supported by worms
and insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, fresh raw meat,
can meet with neither in long and tedious voyages. It is from this
defect of food that our collections (curious as they are) are
defective, and we are deprived of some of the most delicate and
lively genera.

I am, etc.

Letter XXXI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Sept. 14, 1770.

Dear Sir,

You saw, I find, the ring-ousels again among their native crags; and
are farther assured that they continue resident in those cold regions
the whole year. From whence, then, do our ring-ousels migrate so
regularly every September, and make their appearance again, as if
in their return, every April? They are more early this year than
common, for some were seen at the usual hill on the fourth of this
month.

An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they frequent
some parts of Dartmoor, and breed there; but leave those haunts
about the end of September or beginning of October, and return
again about the end of March.

Another intelligent person assures me that they breed in great
abundance all over the Peak of Derby, and are called there tor-
ousels; withdraw in October and November, and return in spring.
This information seems to throw some light on my new migration.

Scopoli's * new work (which I have just procured) has its merits in
ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol and Carniola.
Monographers, come from whence they may, have, I think, fair
presence to challenge some regard and approbation from the lovers
of natural history; for, as no man can alone investigate all the
works of nature, these partial writers may, each in their
department, be more accurate in their discoveries, and freer from
errors, than more general writers; and so by degrees may pave the
way to an universal correct natural history. Not that Scopoli is so
circumstantial and attentive to the life and conversation of his birds
as I could wish: he advances some false facts; as when he says of
the hirundo urbica that 'pullos extra nidum non nutrit.' This
assertion I know to be wrong from repeated observations this
summer, for house-martins do feed their young flying, though it
must be acknowledged not so commonly as the house-swallow;
and the feat is done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to
indifferent observers. He also advances some (I was going to say)
improbable facts; as when he says of the woodcock that, 'pullos
rostra portat fugiens ab hoste.' But candour forbids me to say
absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never been witness
to such a fact. I have only to remark that the long unwieldy bill of
the woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted of any among the
winged creation for such a feat of natural affection.
(*Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis.)

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