and likely means of destroying them, would be allowed by the public to be a most useful and impor. tant work. What knowledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be collected; great improvements would soon follow, of course. A knowl. edge of the properties, economy, and, in short, of the life and conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to some method of preventing their depredations.

As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend entomology more than some neat plates, that should well express the generic distinctions of insects according to Linnæus; for I am well assured that many people would study insects, could they set out with a more adequate notion of those distinctions than can be conveyed at first by words alone.

Selborne, 1771.

DEAR SIR, HAPPENING to make a visit to my neighbour's PEACOCKS, I could not help observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails, those long feathers grow. ing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short, brown, stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case

were these long feathers fixed only in the back, as

may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong, muscular vibration, these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backward.

LETTER XXXVI.

Selborne, 1771.

DEAR SIR, THE summer through I have seen but two of that large species of bat which I call vespertilio altivolans, from its manner of feeding high in the air.

In the extent of their wings they measured four

teen inches and a half, and four inches and a half from the nose to the tip of the tail: their heads were large, their nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad and muscular, and their whole bodies fleshy and plump. Nothing could be more sleek and soft than their fur, which was of a bright chestnut colour; their maws were full of food, but so macerated that the quality could not be distinguished; their livers, kidneys, and hearts were large, and their bowels covered with fat. They weighed each, when entire, full one ounce and one drachm. Within the ear there was somewhat of a peculiar structure that I did not understand perfectly, but refer it to the observation of the curious anato. mist. These creatures send forth a very rancid and offensive smell.

LETTER XXXVII.

Selborne, 1771.

DEAR SIR, ON the twelfth of July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the motions of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a large oak that swarmed with scarabæi solstitiales, or fern-chafers.* The powers of its wing were

* We find the following additional information regarding the goat-sucker in Mr. White's Miscellaneous Observations: "A fern-owl this evening (August 27) showed off, in a very unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally glancing up among the boughs of the tree. This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalana belonging to the oak, and exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I think, to the swallow itself.

wonderful, exceeding, if possible, the various evolutions and quick turns of the swallow genus. But the circumstance that pleased me most was, that I saw it distinctly more than once put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the head,

ace.

"When a person approaches the haunts of fern-owls in an evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder, and, by striking their wings together above their backs, in the manner that pigeons called twisters are known to do, make a smart swap. Perhaps at that time they are jealous for their young, and their noise and gesture are intended by way of menFern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of food; for the next evening we saw one again several times among the boughs of the same tree, but it did not skim round its stem over the grass as on the evening before. In May these birds find the scarabæus melalontha on the oak, and the scarabæus solstitialis of midsummer. These peculiar birds can only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four, and then in a dubious twilight, an hour after sunset, and an hour before sunrise "

On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of a fern-owl or eve-jar, which she found on the verge of the Hanger, to the left of the Hermitage, under a beechen shrub. This person, who lives just at the foot of the Hanger, seems well acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, and says she has often found their eggs near that place, and that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, streaked somewhat in the manner of the plumage of the parent bird, and were equal in size at each end. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone curlews, and some other birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do not make much of nests."

Many of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the half, in general, have been ravaged by the caterpillars of a small phalana, which is of a pale yellow colour. These insects, though of a feeble race, yet, from their infinite number, are of wonderful ef fect, being able to destroy the foliage of whole forests and districts. At this season they leave their animal, and issue forth in their fly state, swarming and covering the trees and hedges. In a field near Greathamn, I saw a flight of swifts busied in catching their prey near the ground, and found they were hunting after these phalene. The aurelia of this moth is thin, and as black as jet, and lies wrapped up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled round it, and secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot from falling out."

deliver somewhat into its mouth.

If it takes any

part of its prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw.

Swallows and martins-the bulk of them, I mean -have forsaken us sooner this year than usual; for on Sept. the 22d they rendezvoused in a neighbour's walnut-tree, where it seemed probable they had taken up their lodgings for the night. At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they rose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the stroke of their wings against the hazy air as might be heard to a considerable distance; since that no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.

Some swifts stayed late, till the 22d of August; a rare instance! for they usually withdraw within the first week.*

On September the 24th, three or four ringousels appeared in my fields for the first time this season. How punctual are these visiters in their autumnal and spring migrations!

LETTER XXXVIII.

Selborne, March 15, 1773. DEAR SIR, BY my journal for last autumn it appears that the HOUSE-MARTINS stayed very late in these parts, for on the 1st of October I saw young martins in their nests nearly fledged; and again, on the 21st of October, we had, at the next house, a

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* See Letter XLVIII., Part II.