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 fieldfares, which are so congenerous to thrushes and black birds, 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 ringousel, 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 shortwinged 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 1.

The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is

It has lately been ascertained that Ireland has also its peculiar hare, which is apt to become white in winter when kept in parks or other enclosures. Specimens of this animal have been repeatedly exhibited in the Zoological Society's Gardens; where its different appearance from that of the English hare has often induced visitors to remark on it as a "curious rabbit." Its head, as pointed out by Mr. Yarrell at a Meeting of the Society in 1833, is shorter and more rounded than that of the common hare; its ears are proportionally, as well as absolutely, shorter, not equalling the head in length; and its limbs are less lengthened. Its

so majestic a bird, that it would grace our Fauna much 2.

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 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 shrewmouse: but still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article of 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

fur consists of only one kind of hair, and is useless as an article of commerce a test which affords strong evidence of the distinction of the Irish from the English hare.-E. T. B.

2 The eagle owl (Bubo maximus, GER.) has been shot in Yorkshire and Suffolk, as well as in Scotland.-Montagu, Orn. Dict.

K

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 bat3 (which by the by is at present a nondescript in England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires or 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 highflying gnats, scarabs, or Phalana, that are of short continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food.

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.

3 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.

4

A Vespertilio Noctula certainly winters in England. I once procured some in a torpid state in February. It flies high in the early part of the evening; but descends, as the night closes in, towards the surface of waters to procure its food.-G. D.

LETTER XXVII.

DEAR SIR,

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Feb. 22, 1770. HEDGEHOGS abound 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. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food1. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which appeared to be

'Hedgehogs have now become so well known in the metropolis on account of their insectivorous propensities, that they are offered for sale at those markets which are supplied by the country people with vegetables. The lower parts of many of the houses in London are overrun by black beetles to such an extent as to render it necessary to apply some means of diminishing the numbers of these disagreeable intruders; and among the modes that have been resorted to for the purpose of destroying them, the introduction of a hedgehog into the kitchen is one of the most effectual. For the support of the animal, in addition to the beetles which it devours, a little bread and milk is requisite; and it is very fond of picking bones. In such circumstances a hedgehog has occasionally become in some degree domesticated; and its familiarity has been carried to the extent of allowing itself to be handled, especially by children, and to be lifted from the ground by its spines, without attempting to coil itself up into its usual ball-like posture of defence: a form which it would immediately assume when touched by a stranger. It would run too after its little playmates; and when excluded from the room in which they were, would scratch at the door as if to ask admittance among them. In the instance especially referred to the little creature was on one occasion missing for six weeks; and, on recovering from its long nap, resumed at once its accustomed habits, the usual scratching at the door being the first notice given of the return of the long lost pet. Eventually it was excluded altogether from society, and was closely confined; when it refused its food and died.—E. T. B.