 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how to volunteer, please contact LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Yersley. The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White Letters 14-22 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Letters 14 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Selborne, March 12, 1768 Dear Sir, if some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow deer and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two spiracular or breathing places beside the nostrils, probably analogous to the punked lacrimalia in the human head. When the deer are thirsty they plunge their noses like some horses very deep underwater, while in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situation for a considerable time. But to obviate any inconvenience they can open two vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communication with the nose. Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy of our attention, and which has not that I know of been noticed by any naturalist, for it looks as if these creatures would not be suffocated, though both their mouths and nostrils were stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase by affording them free respiration, and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run. In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious and personate reply. I was much surprised to find in the antelope something analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This animal has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them. End of note. Mr. Ray observed that at Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked, for they, being naturally straight or small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they travelled or laboured in that hot climate, and we know that grooms and gentlemen of the turf think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection in hunters and running horses. Opian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracular. Writers copying from one another make Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears, whereas he asserts just the contrary. Alcmion does not advance what is true when he advers that goats breathe through their ears. From the History of Animals, Book 1, Chapter 11 Dear sir, some intelligent country people have a notion that we have in these parts a species of the genus Mustalinum besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat. A little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on, but further inquiry may be made. A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white. A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter. Were not these the Embares and Nivalis, the snowflake of the British zoology? No doubt they were. A few years ago I saw a cock-bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it had come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy, and, blackening every succeeding year, it became cold black at the end of four. Its chief food was hemp seed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals. The pied-and-mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food. I had remarked for years that the root of the cuckoo-pint, Arum, was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges and eaten in severe snowy weather, after observing with some exactness myself and getting others to do the same, we found it was the 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 Paris, 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 desultry that I missed my aim. I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius edicneimas, 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, curca 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 16 to Thomas Pennantisquire, Selbourne, April 18, 1768 Dear sir, the history of the stone curlew, charadrius edicneimas, 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 countrymen 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 their 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 which may be heard a mile. Edicneimas 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 woolow-rens. Two are no 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 Rhineck sometimes accepted, 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 grass-hopper-lark began his sibilus note in my field's last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by, though at a hundred yards' distance, and when closer to 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 grass-hopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locuster 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 regular non-Christati from which it is very distinct. See Ray's philosophical letters, page 108. The fly-catcher, Stopparola, has not yet appeared. It usually breeds in my vine. The red-start begins to sing. Its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-rens, the smaller sort, are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, cherries, currants, et cetera, 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. Reader's note, common name, followed by the Linnaean name. End Reader's note. Smallest willow-ren. Mottakilla troculus. Rhineck, jinxed toquila. House swallow, hirundo rustica. Martin, hirundo herbica. Sand Martin, hirundo riparia. Cuckoo, cuckulus canorus. Nightingale, mottakilla loschina. Blackcap, mottakilla atricapilla. Whitethroat, mottakilla sylvia. Middle willow-ren. Mottakilla troculus. Swift, hirundo apus. Stone curlew. Chiradri acidicnemus. Turtledove. Turtua, elder of Andy. Grasshopper lark. Elorda trivialis. Landrail, Rallus crex. Largest willow-ren. Mottakilla troculus. Redstart, mottakilla finicuris. Goatsucker or fern owl. Caprimulgus europeus. Flycatcher, musca capa grisola. My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bow or some old pales, calling it a jar bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact. It proved to be the sitter Europa, 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 ventralochris, 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 like a tit-mouse, with its back downwards. Yours, etc., etc. Letter 17 to Thomas Pennant, Esquire. Selbourne, June the 18th, 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 vigor, 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 I could 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 amongst his viviparous animals, and is silent with regard to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps they may be Esomenotokai, Exodusotokai. Readers note translation from the Greek. Internally they are viviparous, externally, however, they are viviparous. End of note. As is known to be the case with the viper. The copulation of frogs, or at least the appearance of it, for swamadan proves that the male has no penis in trans, 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 eyewitness 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 turned to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a 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. I need not to remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent account there is from Mr. Durham in Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, concerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain, showing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state, but in a few weeks our lanes, paths, fields will swarm for a few days with myriads of these immigrants, no larger than my little fingernail. Samadam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the female. How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile reptile. While it is aquatic it has a fish-like tail and no legs. As soon as the legs sprout the tail drops off as useless and the animal betakes itself to the land. Merit, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the Rana arborea is an English reptile. It abounds in Germany and Switzerland. It is to be remembered that the salamandra aquatica of Ray, the water-nute or EFT, will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted that the salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived and died in the water, but John Ellis' choir, FRS, the Coraline Ellis, asserts in a letter to the Royal Society dated June 5, 1766, in his account of the mud inguana and amphibious bidets from South Carolina that the water-eft or newt is only the lava of the land-eft as tadpoles are of frogs. Lest I should be suspected to misunderstand his meaning I shall give it in his own words. Speaking of the Opercula or covering to the gills of the mud inguana he proceeds to say that forms of these penated coverings approach very near to what I have some time ago observed in the lava or aquatic state of our English Lacerta known by the name of EFT or newt which serve them for coverings to their gills and for fins to swim with while in this state and which they lose as well as the fins of their tails when they change their state and become land-animals as I have observed by keeping them alive for some time myself. Linaeus in his Sistema Naturae hints at what Mr. Ellis advances more than once Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your publications you will not omit to mention common salad oil as a sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm, Anguis Fragilis so-called because it snaps its under with a small blow I have found on examination that it is perfectly innocuous a neighbouring yeoman to whom I am indebted for some good hints killed and opened a female viper about the 27th of May he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs about the size of those of a blackbird but none of them were advanced so far towards the state of maturity that they did not contain any rudiments of young though they are oviparous yet they are viviparous also hatching their young within their bellies and then bringing them forth whereas snakes lay chains of eggs every summer in my melon beds in spite of all that my people can do to prevent them which eggs do not hatch till the spring following as I have often experienced several intelligent folks assume me that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young and frightened surprises just as the female opossum does her brood into the pouch under her belly upon the like emergencies and yet the London Vipercatchers insist on it to Mr Barrington that no such thing ever happens the serpent kind eat I believe but once in a year or rather but only just at one season of the year country people talk much of a water snake but I am pretty sure without any reason for the common snake Coluba Matrix to sport in the water perhaps with a view to procure frogs and other food I cannot well guess how you ought to make out your twelve species of reptiles unless it be by the various species or rather varieties of our Lacerti of which Ray enumerates five I have not had an opportunity of ascertaining these but remember well to have seen formally several beautiful green Lacerti on the sunny sandbanks near Farnham in Surrey admits there are such in Ireland Letter 18 to Thomas Penant Esquire Selbourne July the 27th 1768 Dear sir I received your obliging and communicative letter of June the 28th while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house where I had neither books to turn to nor leisure to sit down to return you an answer to many queries which I wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am able a person by my order has searched our brooks but could find no such fish as the Gasterosteus Pungitius he found the Gasterosteus Sculeatus in plenty this morning in a basket I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss and in it some sticklebacks male and female the females big with spawn some lampurns, some bull's heads but I could produce no minnows this basket will be in Fleet Street by eight this evening so I hope for Mezel will have them fresh and fair tomorrow morning I gave some directions in a letter to what particulars the engraver should be attentive finding while I was on a visit that I was within a reasonable distance for Ambersbury I sent a servant over to that town and procured several diving specimens of loaches which he brought safe and brisk in a glass decanter they were taken in the gullies for watering the meadows from these fishes which measured from two to four inches in length I took the following description the loach in its general aspect has a pollucid appearance its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots not reaching much below the linear lateralis as are the back and tail fins a black line runs from each eye down to the nose its belly is of a silvery white the upper jaw projects beyond the lower and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side its pectoral fins are large its ventral much smaller the fin behind its anus small, its dorsal fin large containing eight spines its tail where it joins to the tail fin remarkably broad without any taperness so as to be characteristic of this genus the tail fin is broad and square at the end from the breadth and muscular strength of the tail it appears to be an active nimble fish in my visit I was not very far from hungerford and did not forget to make some inquiries concerning the wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads several intelligent persons both gentry and clergy do I find give a great deal of credit to what was asserted in the papers and I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded that what was related is matter of fact but when I came to attend to his account I thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little invalidate the woman's story of the manner in which she came by her skill she says of herself that laboring under a virulent cancer she went to some church where there was a vast crowd on going into a pew she was accosted by a strange clergyman who after expressing compassion for her situation told her that if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned she would be well now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single sufferer and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument or at least by some means of publication or other have found a method of making it public for the good of mankind in short this woman as it appears to me having set up for a cancer doctor's finds it expedient to amuse the country with this dark and mysterious relation the water effed has not that I can discern the least appearance of any gills for one of which it is continually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh air I opened a big bellied one indeed and found it full of spawn not that this circumstance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larvae for the larvae of insects are full of eggs which they exclude the instant they enter their last state the water effed is continually climbing over the brim of the vessel within which we keep it in water and wandering away and people every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched up the dry banks there are varieties of them differing colour and some have fins up their tail and some have not Dear sir, I have now passed to dispute made out three distinct species of the willow-rens mottosilly trocally which constantly and invariably used distinct notes but at the same time I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark in my letter of April the 18th I told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark but had not seen it then but when I came to procure it it proved in all respects a very mottosillotroculus only that it is a size larger than the two other and the yellow green of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid and the belly of a clearer white I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before me and can discern that there are three gradations of sizes and that the least has black legs and the other two flesh-colored ones the yellowest bird is considerably the largest and has its quill feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white which the others have not this last haunts only the top of trees in high-beach and woods and makes a sibilus grasshopper-like noise now and then at short intervals shivering a little with its wings when it sings and is, I make no doubt now the regulus non-christatus of rey which he says cantate vocace stridulolocustae readers note sings with the hissing voice of locusts end note yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species letter 20 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Selborn October the 8th 1768 it is I find in zoology as it is in botany all nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined several birds which are said to belong to the north only are, it seems, often in the south I have discovered this summer three species of birds with us which Wright has mentioned as only to be seen in the northern counties the first that was brought to me on the 14th of May was the sandpiper Tringa Hippolucus it was a cock-bird and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village and as it had a companion doubtless intended to have bread near that water besides the owner has told me since that on recollection he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers the next bird that I procured on the 21st of May was a male red-backed butcher bird Lanius Collurio my neighbour who shot it said that it might easily have escaped his notice had not the outcries and chattering of the white-throats and other small birds drawn his attention to the bush where it was its claw was filled with the legs and wings of beetles the next rare birds which were procured for me last week were some ring oozles Turditoquati this week twelve months a gentleman from London being with us was amusing himself with a gun and found he told us on an old U-H where there were berries some birds like blackbirds with rings of white round their necks a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed the same but as no specimens were procured little notice was taken I mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November 4th 1767 you however paid but small regards to what I said as I had not seen these birds myself but last week a farmer seeing a large flock twenty or thirty of these birds shot two cocks and two hens and says on recollection that he remembers to have observed these birds again last spring about lady-day as it were on their return to the north now perhaps these oozles are not the oozles of the north of England but belong to the more northern parts of Europe and may retire before the excessive rigor of the frosts in those parts and return to breed in the spring when the cold abates if this be the case here is discovered a new bird of winter passage concerning whose migrations the writers are silent but if these birds should prove the oozles of the north of England then here is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked it does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south but it is most probable that they usually do that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the southern counties the oozle is larger than a black bird and feeds on hoars but last autumn when there were no hoars it fed on new berries in the spring it feeds on ivy berries which ripen only at that season in March and April I must not omit to tell you as you have been so lately on the study of reptiles that my people every now and then of late draw up with a bucket of water from my well which is 63 feet deep a large black warty lizard with a thin tail and yellow belly how they first came down at that depth and how they were ever to have got out thence without help is more than I am able to say my thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the examination of a buck's head as far as your discoveries reach at present they seem much to corroborate my suspicions and I hope Mr. Blank may find reason to give his decision in my favour and then I think we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation as yet I have not quite done with my history of the edictimus or stone curlew for I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex near whose house these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn to observe nicely when they leave him if they do leave him and when they return again in the spring I was with this gentleman lately and saw several single birds letter 21 to Thomas Pennantisquire cell worn November the 28th, 1768 Dear sir, with regard to the edictimus or stone curlew I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester in whose neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound and shall urge him to take particular notice when they begin to congregate and afterwards to watch them most narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of winter when I have obtained information with respect to this circumstance I shall have finished my history of the stone curlew which I hope will prove to your satisfaction as it will be I trust very near the truth this gentleman as he occupies a large farm of his own and is abroad early and late will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these birds and besides as I have prevailed on him to buy the naturalist's journal with which he is much delighted I shall expect that he will be very exact in his dates it is very extraordinary as you observe that a bird so common with us should never struggle to you and here will be the properest place to mention of it an anecdote which the above mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at his house which was that in a warren joining to his outlet many doors Corvi monedjuli build every year in the rabbit burrows underground the way he and his brothers used to take their nests while they were boys was by listening at the mouths of the holes and if they heard the young ones cry they twisted the nest out with a forked stick some waterfowls vis the puffins breed I know in that manner but I should never have suspected the doors of building in holes on the flat ground another very unlikely spot is made use of by doors as a place to breed in and that is stonehenge these birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd boys who are always idling round that place one of my neighbours last Saturday November the 26th saw a martin in a sheltered bottom the sun shone warm and the bird was hawking briskly after flies I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter you judge very right I think in speaking with the reserve and caution concerning the cures done by toads for let people advance what they will on such subjects yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived that one cannot safely relate anything from a common report especially in print without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion your approbation with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ring oozle gives me satisfaction and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us you will be sure I hope not to make inquiry whether your ring oozles leave your rocks in the autumn what puzzles me most is the very short stay they make with us for in about three weeks they are all gone I shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in the spring as they did last year I want to be better informed with regard to ick theology if fortune had settled me near the seaside or near some great river my natural propensity would soon have urged me to make myself acquainted with their productions but as I have lived mostly in inland parts and in an upland district my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce I am etc letter 22 to Thomas Penetresquire Selborn, July 2nd 1769 Dear sir, as to the peculiarity of jack doors building with us under the ground in rabbit burrows you have in part hit upon the reason for in reality there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country and perhaps Norfolk accepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as mainly furnished with churches as almost any count is in the kingdom we have many livings two or three hundred pounds a year whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dovecots when I first saw Northamptonshire Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and the Fens of Lincolnshire I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves in every point of view as an admirer of prospects I have reason to lament this want in my own country for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape what you mentioned with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity an ancient author though no naturalist has well remarked that every kind of beasts and of birds and of serpents and of things in the sea is tamed and has been tamed of mankind from James chapter 3 verse 7 it is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devonshire because it corroborates my discovery which I made many years ago of the same sort on a sunny sand bank near Farnham in Surrey I am well acquainted with the south hams of Devonshire and can suppose that district from its southerly situation to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours since the ring oozles of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake them against winter our suspicions that those which visit this neighbourhood are not English birds but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts are still more reasonable and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come and to inquire why they make so very short a stay in your account of your error with regard to the two species of herons you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressy Hall which is a curiosity I could never manage to see four score nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressy Hall is and near what town it lies note Cressy Hall is near Spalding in Lincolnshire end note I have often thought that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored if half a dozen gentlemen furnished with a good strength of water-spanules were to beat them over for a week they would certainly find more species there is no bird I believe whose manners I have studied more than that of the Capli Morgus the goat-sucker as it is a wonderful and curious creature but I have always found that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies as I know it does yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bow and I have for many a half hour watched it as it sat with its undemandable quivering and particularly this summer it perches usually on a bare twig with its head lower than its tail in an attitude well expressed by your draftsman in the Folio British Zoology this bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day so exactly that I have known its strike up more than once or twice just at the report as the Portsmouth Evening Gun which we can hear when the weather is still it appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic impulse by the powers of the parts of its windpipe formed for sound just as cats pur you'll credit me I hope when I tell you that as my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea one of these churn owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and began to chatter and continued his note for many minutes and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs of that little animal when put in motion gave a sensible vibration to the whole building this bird also sometimes makes a small squeak repeated four or five times and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree it would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have procured should prove a new one since five species have been found in a neighbouring kingdom the great sort that I mentioned is certainly a nondescript I saw but one this summer and I had no opportunity of taking it your account of the Indian grass was entertaining I am no angler myself but inquiring of those that are opposed that part of their tackle to be made of they replied of the intestines of a silkworm though I must not pretend to great skill in entomology yet I cannot say that I am ignorant of that kind of knowledge I may now and then perhaps be able to furnish you with a little information the vast rains ceased to us much about the same time as with you and since we have had delicate weather who has measured the rain for more than 30 years says in a late letter that more has fallen this year than in any he ever attended to though from July 1763 to January 1764 more fell than in any seven months of this year the end of Letters 14 to 22 to Thomas Penantisquire in the natural history of Selborne by Gilbert White this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please contact LibriVox.org recording by Peter Yersley the natural history of Selborne by Gilbert White Letters to Thomas Penant Numbers 23 to 31 Letters 23 to Thomas Penantisquire Selborne January the 28th 1769 Dear sir, it is not improbable that the Guernsey Lizard and our Green Lizard may be specifically the same. All that I know is that when some years ago many Guernsey Lizards were turned loose in Pembroke College Garden in the University of Oxford they lived a great while and seemed to enjoy themselves very well but never bred whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I shall not pretend to say. I return you thanks for your account of Cressy Hall but recollect not without regret that in June 1746 I was visiting for a week together at Spalding without ever being told that such a curiosity was just a tanned pray send me word in your next what sort of tree it is that contains such a quantity of heron's nests and whether the heronry consists of a whole grove or wood or only of a few trees it gave me satisfaction to find that we accorded so well about the Caprimulgus all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters sitting as well as flying and therefore the noise was voluntary and from organic impulse and not from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its mouth and throat if ever I saw anything like actual migration I was travelling and out early in the morning at first there was a vast fog but by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast the sun broke out into a delicate warm day we were then on a large heath or common and I could discern as the mist began to break away great numbers of swallows he runned in his rustic key clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes as if they had roosted there all night as soon as the air became clear and pleasant they were all on the wing at once and by a placid and easy flight proceeded on southward towards the sea after this I did not see any more flocks only now and then a straggler I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually as they come for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once only some stragglers stay behind a long while and do never there is the greatest reason to believe leave this island swallows seem to lay themselves up and to come forth in a warm day as bats do continually of a warm evening after they have disappeared for weeks for a very respectable gentleman assured me that as he was walking with some friends under myrton wall on a remarkably hot noon either in the last week in december or the first week in january he aspired three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at oxford than elsewhere is it owing to the vast, massy buildings of that place to the many waters around it or to what else when I used to rise in a morning last autumn and see the swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring cottages could not help being touched with a secret delight mixed with some degree of mortification with delight to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration or hiding imprinted on their minds by their great creator and with some degree of mortification when I reflected that after all our pains and inquiries we are yet not quite certain that the regions they do migrate and are still farther embarrassed to find that some do not actually migrate at all these reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination that they became productive of a composition that may perhaps amuse you for a quarter of an hour when next I had the honour of writing to you Letter 24 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Selborn May 29th 1769 Dear Sir the scarabayas fullo I know very well having seen it in collections but have never been able to discover one wild in its natural state Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on the sea coast on the thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down where the ring-oosles have been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall in their way perhaps to the north or south and was much pleased to see three birds about the usual spot we shot a cock and a hen they were plump and in high condition the hen had but very small rudiments of eggs within her which proves they are late breeders whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that time in their crops was nothing very distinguishable but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested in autumn they feed on whores and uberies and in the spring on ivy berries I dressed one of these birds and found it juicy and well-flavoured it is remarkable that they make but a few days stay in their spring visit but rest near a fortnight at Mecklemass these birds from the observations of three springs and two autums are most punctual in their return and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the writers who suppose they never were to be seen in any of the southern counties one of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria which at first I suspected might have proved your willow lark but on a nicer examination it answered much better to the description of that species which you shot at Reevesby in Lincolnshire note for this salicaria see letter August the 30th 1769 end note my bird I describe thus it is a size less than the grasshopper lark the head back and coverts of the wings of a dusky brown without those dark spots of the grasshopper lark over each eye is a milk white stroke the chin and throat are white and the under parts of a yellowish white the rump is tawny and the feathers of the tail sharp pointed the bill is dusky and sharp and the legs are dusky and the claws long and crooked 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 enquiry for my part I suspect it is a second sort of Locustella hinted at by Dr. Durham in Ray's letters see page 108 he also procured me a grasshopper lark the question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America there's 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 everyone's hypothesis is each as good as another's since they are all founded on a 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 but this is making use of a violent piece of machinery it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god incredulous odai readers note I dislike this I refuse to believe it end note to Thomas Pennant Esquire the naturalists summer evening walk equidem credo quia sit divinatus illus inganium readers note Latin quote from Virgil and readers note when day declining sheds a milder gleam what time the mayfly haunts the pool or stream when the still owl skims round the grassy mead what time the timorous hair limps forth to feed then be the time to steal the down the veil and listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale to hear the clamorous curlew call his mate or the soft quail his tender pain relate to see the swallow sweep the darkening plane belated to support her infant train to mark the swift in rapid giddy ring dash round the steeple unsubdued of wing amusive birds say where your hid retreat when the frost rages and the tempest speak whence your return by such nice instincts led when spring soft season lifts her bloomy head such baffled searches mock man's prying pride the god of nature is your secret guide while deepening shades obscure the face of day to yonder bench leaf sheltered let us stray till blended objects fail the swimming site and all the fading landscape sinks in night to hear the drowsy door come brushing by with buzzing wing or the shrill cricket cry to see the feeding bat glance through the wood to catch the distant falling of the flood while over the cliff the awakened churn owl hung through the still gloom protracts his chattering song while high in air and poised upon his wings unseen the soft enamoured woodlark sings these natures works the curious mind employ inspire a soothing melancholy joy as fancy warms a pleasing kind of pain feels over the cheek and thrills the creeping vein each rural sight each sound each smell combine the tinkling sheep bell or the breath of kind the new moon hay that scents the swelling breeze or cottage chimney smoking through the trees the chilling night dews fall away, retire for see the glow worm lights her amorous fire had half obscured the sky the impatient damsel hung her lamp on high true to the signal by love's meteor lead liander hastened to his hero's bed I am, etc. Letter 25 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Selborn, August the 30th 1769 Dear sir, it gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the oozle migration pleases you you put a very shrewd question when you ask me how I know that their autumn migration is southward was not candor 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 oozles did the same as well as their congeners the field fairs and especially as ring oozles 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 or less than the Pasa Arondinasius Minor of Rey 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 Rey who ranges it among his piquis affines it ought no doubt to have gone among his aviculi corda unicolore and among your slender build small birds of the same division Linnaeus might with great propriety have put it into his genus of killer and the motor killer salicaria of his fauna suechica 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 skylark and has a strange hurrying manner in its song the specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your fen salicaria shot near Reevesby Mr. Rey has given an excellent characteristic of it when he says rostrum et peides in hackevicula molto maggiores sunt quampro corpore strattione readers note this bird's beak and feet are very much larger in relation to its body end note the sea letter may 29th 1769 I have got you the egg of an edictemus or stone curlew which was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground there were two but the finder 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 say 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 unalarm but as soon as a stranger or a dog or cat came in it felt hissing and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable thus the skunk or stonk of Rey's sinop quadr 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 nothing can be more horrible a gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the lanius minus kinorassens cum macula in scapulus alborae which is a bird that at the time of your publishing your first two volumes of British zoology I find you had not seen you have described it well from Edward's drawing letter 26 to Thomas Penner disquire Selborn December the 8th 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 a day for their return post from place to place rather as if they were on a journey 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 fears 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 oozle 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 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 Mikkelmus and again for about a week over April I am seized with wonder and long to be informed whence these travellers come and wither they go since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or baiting place your account of the greater brambling or snowflake 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 the bufong I know has described the water shroomouse 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 hair as a neighbour was lately plowing in a dry chalky field far removed from any water he turned out a water rat in an hibernaculum 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 amphibious 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 that it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before with respect to the invariable early retreat of the herondo 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 where 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 herondines and the larger bats are supported by some sorts of high flying gnats scarabs or phylane that are of short continuance and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food note 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 or a rare species with us end note by my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the 31st since which I have not seen or heard any swallows were observed on to November the 3rd letter 27 to Thomas Pennant Esquire Selborn February the 22nd 1770 dear sir hedgehogs are bound in my gardens and fields the manner in which they eat the 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 walks in some measure by digging little round holes 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 hedgehogs 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 damn 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 discernable 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 defense 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 hedgehogs make a deep and warm hibernaculum 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 fieldfair Turidus pilares which I think is particular enough it sits on trees in the daytime and procures the greatest part of its food from white-thorn hedges yea more ever builds on very high trees as may be seen by the fauna suechica 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 batfowlers 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 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 28 to Thomas Pinnott Square, Selbourne March 1770 on Mickelmer's 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 rear quadruped I found it in an old greenhouse 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 ground's 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 gralee order I measured it as they do in horse and found that from the ground to the water I found that from the ground to the water it was just 5 feet 4 inches which height answers exactly to 16 hands a growth that few horses arrive at but then with this length of legs its neck was remarkably short no more than 12 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 20 inches long and ass-like and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw before with huge nostrils this lip, travelers say is esteemed a dainty dish in North America it is very reasonable to suppose that this animal 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 is delight in emphaya or water lily from the 4 feet to the belly behind the shoulder it measured 3 feet and 8 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 4 inches long the fore hoofs were upright and shapely the hind flat unsplayed the spring before it was only 2 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 10 feet and a 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 pleased 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 29 to Thomas Penanty Squire, cell born May the 12th 1770 dear sir last month we had such a series of cold and 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 flycatcher I have not seen it it is indeed one of the latest that 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 11th 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 he 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 copies 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 dain to wet a foot much less to plunge into that element quadrupeds that prey on fish are amphibious such as the otter 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 Selbourn from Hartley Wood letter 30 to Thomas Penantusquire Selbourn, August the 1st 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 pretensis securely calamitas artis reader's note the present century's verbosity is arts disaster end note pray, how do you approve of Gopoli's new work as I admire his entomology 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 to see many strange and wonderful specimens when I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington most obligingly carried me to see many curious sites 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 Pembrokes at Wilton and horn room furnished with more than 30 different pairs but I have not seen that house lately Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed 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 fringillar genera and no motokilly or musky cape 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 succidanium 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 31 to Thomas Pennantusquire Selborn, September the 14th, 1770 Dear sir, you saw I find the ring-usels again among their native crags and our father assured that they continue resident in those cold regions the whole year from whence then do our ring-usels 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 their tour-usels withdrawal in October and November and return in spring this information seems to throw some light on my new migration Gopoli's new work, Anna's Primus Historiconatoralis which I have just procured has its merits in ascertaining many of the birds of the Tyrol and Carniola. Monographers come from whence they may have I think fair pretence 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 from errors than more general writers and so by degrees may pave the way to an universal, correct natural history not that Gopoli 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 Herundo Urbica that pull us extra nidum non-nutrit readers note it does not feed its young away from the nest end note this assertion I know to be wrong from repeated observations this summer the house martins do feed their young flying though it must be acknowledged not so commonly as a house swallow and the feed is done in so quicker 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 pull us rostra port at Fugien's Abhoste readers note it carries its young in its beak when fleeing an enemy end note but candor 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 unwieldily bill of the Woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted of any among the winged creation for such a feat of natural affection I am etc the end of letters 23 to 31 to Thomas Pennant of Gilbert White's natural history of Selborne