from the water-rat, both in size, make, and manner of life.

As to the falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me. Though mutilated, "qualem dices... antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiæ !"

It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum.

The parish I live in is a very abrupt uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.

XI.

It will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to the falco; as to its weight, breadth, &c. I wish I had set them down at the time; but to the best of my remenbrance, it weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of its eyelids a bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the pupils and the irides.

The most unusual birds I ever observed in these

parts were a pair of hoopoes, (upupa,) which came several years ago in the summer, and frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the walks, many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who never let them be at rest. *

Three gross-beaks (loxia coccothraustes) appeared some years ago in my fields, in the winter; one of which I shot. Since that, now and then one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.†

* Specimens have been killed at different times in this country, and instances are recorded of their having even bred; the species, however, can only be placed among our occasional visitants. The specimen from which the figure in Mr Selby's elegant Illustrations of British Ornithology was drawn, was taken on the coast near Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland. Colonel Montague mentions a pair that began a nest in Hampshire, and Dr Latham records a young hoopoe shot in the month of June. The species is abundantly met with in the south of Europe; it also occurs in Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. In the winter it retires to Asia and Africa, where it is also a permanent resident.-W. J.

This also can only be placed as an occasional visitant, appearing most frequently in the southern counties of England during hard and stormy winters. Mr White (as we

learn from the Naturalist's Calendar and Miscellaneous Observations, published in a separate volume since the author's decease by Dr Aiken, and to which we shall occasionally refer) met with this species at different times, and found it feeding on the stones of damson plums, which still remained on and about the trees in his garden. This species forms the type of the genus coccothraustes." On the 14th May, 1828, the nest of a hawfinch was taken in an orchard belonging to Mr Waring, at Chelsfield, Kent. The old female was shot on the nest, which was of a slovenly loose

A cross-bill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neighbourhood.

Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull'shead or miller's-thumb (gobius fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla),* the lampern (lampætra parva et fluviatilis), and the stickle-back (pisciculus aculeatus).

We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild fowls, we have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and multitudes of widgeons and teals, in hard weather, frequent our lakes in the forest.

Having some acquaintance with a tame brown

form, and shallow, not being so deep as those of the greenfinch or linnet, and was placed against the large bough of an apple-tree about ten feet from the ground. It was composed externally of dead twigs and a few roots, mixed with coarse white moss or lichen, and lined with horse-hair and a little fine dried grass. The eggs were five in number, about the size of a skylark's, but shorter and rounder, and spotted with bluish ash and olive brown, some of the spots inclining to dusky or blackish brown. The markings were variously distributed on the different eggs.”—J. C. Loudon, Jour. of Nat. Hist.-W. J.

* Mr Yarrel of London, a most accurate and observant naturalist, in a late number of the Zoological Journal, hints at the possibility of two species of eels being natives of this country. Of this I certainly think Mr Yarrel will be correct, their similarity rendering them easily confused. The species with which the London markets are supplied from Holland may also be discovered, as our researches in the Ichthyology of Great Britain, so long comparatively neglected, become more frequent. The grig of Pennant, which seems to be Mr Yarrel's second species, appears in the Thames, at Oxford, at a different season with the common eel.-W. J.

owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it can

not eat.

The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant supply of fresh mice: whereas the young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.

The house-martins have eggs still, and squabyoung. The last swift I observed was about the 21st of August; it was a straggler.

Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.

I forgot to mention, that I once saw, in Christ Church College quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th of November.

At present, I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auribus.*

I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it any thing to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always re

* Dr Fleming, in his description of British animals, 1828, enumerates seven species included in the genera rhinolophus, or those having membranes upon the nose; vespertilio, including our common bat; and plecotus, those with large W. J.

ears.

D

jected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered: so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats, when down on a flat surface, cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor, ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque

It

manner.

Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams, They love to frequent waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, I think I saw myriads of bats between the two places; the air swarmed with them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a time,

XII.

IT gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco turned out an uncommon one. I must confess I should have been better pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before; but that, I find, would be a difficult task.

This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus--a va« ricty.