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and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois; so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full-grown mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as the mouse above, and measures, from nose to rump, four inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail. We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a half below the freezing point, within doors. The tender evergreens were injured pretty much. It was very providential that the air was still, and the ground well covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have suffered prodigiously. There is reason to believe that some days were more severe than any since the year 1739-40.*

LETTER XIV.'

TO THE SAME.

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 spiracula, or breathing-places,* besides the nostrils; probably analogous to the puncta lachrymalia, "lachrymal ducts," in the human head. "When deer are thirsty, they plunge their noses, like some horses, very deep under water, while in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situation for a considerable time; but, to obviate any inconveniency, 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 our attention, and which has not,

*See Letter LXI.

The slits beneath the eyes of deer are certainly to facilitate breathing, as all keepers know. The separation of the nerves and blood vessels on the cheeks of deer does not affect the horns in any great degree, or even the cutting of the spermatic cord. Any injury, however, to the testicles in all cases either retards or alters the growth of the horns.-ED.

the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses.

Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula :

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Τετράδυμοι ῥινὲς, πίσυρες πνοίῃσι δίαυλοι.
Quadupartite nostrils, four respiratory passages."
OPP. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. 181.

Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say,

against the hand, either thrusting it repeatedly, or rubbing it. The peculiar odour is freely imparted to the substance rubbed, but seems to offer no special attraction to his senses: he neither smells to it remarkably, nor licks it. The second male, whose horns have about three-fourths of their full growth, and whose rich colours are only less deep than those of his more aged neighbour, acts in a similar manner. His suborbital sinus, though strongly developed, is not so extensive as that of the older animal: in its quiet state it is scarcely completely closed, so thick are its lips; in its condition of excitement it is widely expanded. The animal then thrusts it at the offered hand; but does not exhibit an equal readiness to rub it. The youngest male is evidently immature; its horns have only commenced making their first spiral turn, and its colour is the fawn of the female, with her pale stripe along the side: for in the Indian antelope, as in inost animals in which the adult males differ in colour from the females, the young of both sexes are similarly coloured and resemble the dam. In this individual the suborbital sinus is small; its lips are closely applied to each other; and they are but slightly moved when the animal is interested; if he uses his nose, the sac is called into moderate action. He cares little for the odour of his older relatives. The remaining specimen was probably of nearly the same age with this younger male when that occurred which, while it allowed of the animal's increasing in bulk, checked the development of the external characters that belong to the mature male. Its advance towards perfection was arrested while the female livery of the young animal was yet retained, and its colour is the fawn of the female with the side marked lengthways by her paler line. Its horn too, normal in its character, as far as a point corresponding with the early part of the first spiral turn, and about this point regularly ringed, afterwards loses the form characteristic of the species, and instead of being completed by a continuous series of spiral turns, surrounded by strongly marked rings, becomes smooth, continues slender, and is directed backwards in one single large sweep, forming a horn altogether monstrous, and one which is sheep-like, though infinitely weak, rather than antelopine: only one such horn remains. In this animal the suborbital sinus is not more developed than in the youngest and immature male, and it is quite unused: the sinus is little more than a mark existing in the ordinary situation, and no motion whatever is observed in its lips; it is not applied to any substance brought near to it, the nose being usually employed. A finger loaded with the secretion from the sac of the mature male is smelt to by this individual, and is then freely licked; perhaps on account of its saltness alone, but probably

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