were assembled near a hundred, most of which were taken, and some I saw. I measured them, and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two inches and a quarter, 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 tail four inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail.' We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month [Jan., 1768]. 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.

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 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 inconvenience, they can open two vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communi. cation with the nose. Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy 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. * Mr. Ray observed, that at Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked; for they, being naturally strait 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.

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

“ Τετράδυμοι δινες, πισυρες πνοιήσι διαυλοι.

Quadrifidæ nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." OPP., CYN., lib. ii., 1, 181.

* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious and pertinent reply: "I was much surprised to find in the antelope something analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This animal also 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 these orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them."

F

Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears, whereas he asserts just the contrary: “Αλκμαιων γαρ ουκ αληθη λεγει, φαμενος αναπνειν τας αιγας κατα τα ωτα. Alcmæon does not advance what is true when he avers that goats breathe through their ears."-History of Animals, book i., chap. xi.

LETTER XV.

Selborne, March 30, 1768. DEAR SIR, SOME intelligent country people have a notion that we have in these parts a species of the genus mustelinum, 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 farther inquiry may be made.

A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite 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 emberiza nivalis, the snowflake of the Brit. Zool.? 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

was come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy, and, blackening every succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hempseed. 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 exact. ness 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 pun. gent.

Our flocks of hen chaffinches have not yet for

* Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour; for, though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the latter.

saken 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 parus, 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 downward, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.

I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius ædicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird; it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, "circa aquas versantes;" for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheepwalks, 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.*

*On the 27th of February, 1788, stone curlews were heard to pipe; and on March the 1st, after it was dark, some were passing over the village, as might be perceived by their quick, short note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of watchword, that they may not stray and lose their companions.

Thus we see that, retire whithersoever they may in the winter, they return again early in the spring, and are, as it now appears, the first summer birds that come back. Perhaps the mildness of the season may have quickened the emigration of the curlews this year.

They spend the day in high, elevated fields and sleepwalks,