Wagtails, both white and yellow, are with us all the winter. Quails crowd to our southern coast, and are often killed in numbers by people that go on purpose.* * Mr Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says, that, "if the wheatear (ananthe) does not quit England, it certainly shifts places; for, about harvest, they are not to be found where there was before great plenty of them." This well accounts for the vast quantities that are caught about that time on the south downs near Lewes, where they are esteemed a delicacy. There have been shepherds, I have been credibly informed, that have made many pounds in a season by catching them in traps. And though such multitudes are taken, I never saw (and I am well acquainted with those parts) above two or three at a time; for they are never gregarious.† They may perhaps migrate in general; and, for that purpose, draw towards the coast of Sussex in autumn; but that they do not all withdraw I am sure, because I see a few stragglers in many counties, at all times of the year, especially about warrens and stone quarries. I have no acquaintance at present among the gentlemen of the navy, but have written to a friend, who was a sea chaplain in the late war, desiring him to look into his minutes, with respect to birds that settled on their rigging during their voyage up or down the Channel. What Hasselquist says on northerly climates, which probably leave us again in the spring. In winter they become familiar, and often visit farm-yards in large flocks. Mr Knapp says, "I witnessed this morning a rick of barley entirely stripped of its thatching, which the buntings had effected, by seizing the end of the straw, and deliberately drawing it out, to search for any grain that might yet remain. The sparrow and other birds will burrow in the stack, and pilfer the corn; and the deliberate operations of unroofing the edifice appears to be peculiar to the bunting.' There is considerable difficulty in conceiving how short-winged birds, which must be bad flyers, should be able to cross extensive tracts of water. St Pierre says, "Towards the end of September, the quails avail themselves of a northerly wind to take their departure from Europe, and flapping one wing, while they present the other to the gale, half sail, half oar, they graze the billows of the Mediterranean with their feathered rumps, and bring themselves to the sands of Africa, that they may serve as food to the famished inhabitants of Zara.". - ED. *The spring wag-tail is migratory; it visits us in May, and departs in September. It is said to be found in Siberia and Russia in summer. It continues in France the whole year. + Our author is wrong in stating that this species is never gregarious; for we are informed by Montagu, that on the 24th of March, 1804, a vast flock of these birds, consisting entirely of males, made their appearance on the south Devon coast, near Kingsbridge, and continued in flocks during the day, busied in search of food. - ED. C that subject is remarkable: there were little short-winged birds frequently coming on board the ship all the way from our Channel quite up to the Levant, especially before squally weather. What you suggest with regard to Spain is highly probable. The winters of Andalusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leave us at that season may find insects sufficient to support them there. Some young man, possessed of fortune, health, and leisure, should make an autumnal voyage into that kingdom, and should spend a year there, investigating the natural history of that vast country. Mr Willughby passed through that kingdom on such an errand; but he seems to have skirted along in a superficial manner, and an ill humour, being much disgusted at the rude, dissolute manners of the people. I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames; nor can I hear any more about those birds which I suspected were merula torquatæ. As to the small mice,* I have farther to remark, that though they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of the standing corn, above the ground, yet I find that, in the winter, they burrow deep in the earth, and make warm beds of grass; but their grand rendezvous seems to be in corn ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour housed an oat rick lately, under the thatch of which 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 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 *This is the harvest mouse, or mus messorius, of Shaw's Zoology, and first discovered by White.-ED. 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 THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 inconveniency, they can open two vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communiIcation 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. Õppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula: : * This is termed the lachrymal sinus, is common to the whole of the genus cervus, and exists in many of the antelopes.-ED. 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 those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them." Τετράδυμοι βινες, πισύρες πνοιησι διαυλοι. 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, φάμενος αναπνειν τας αιγας HATA Tα WTC.-" 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. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 milk-white 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 snow-flake of the British Zoology? No doubt they were.† *The cane has been satisfactorily proved to be the common weasel. It is called in Suffolk the mouse-hunt.. -ED. We can see no reason why the bird referred to may not have been a white lark, as well as a snow-bunting. We have seen white birds of many British species. There was a white lark shot in the neighbourhood of Kingston Rectory, near Canterbury, in October, 1828. In the Natural History Magazine there is a notice of a blackbird's nest found at St Anstell, Cornwall, containing two birds, one of them perfectly white. In the summer of 1831, a blackbird's nest was found at Newbottle, near Edinburgh, containing four young; two of which were of the ordinary colour, and two perfectly white. The former turned out females, and the latter were both male birds. On the grounds of Drumsheugh, the property of our friend Sir Patrick Walker, there was, some years ago, a beautifully mottled blackbird, which became so tame that it fed along EFFECT OF FOOD ON THE COLOUR OF BIRDS. 37 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 in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, 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 pungent. Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken 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 yellowgreen 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 downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.† with the domestic fowls. It continued at Drumsheugh for some years, and was shot by a gentleman from a back window in Melville Street, who had not heard of it, and supposed it a bird of some very uncommon species. It is now in the museum of Sir Patrick. Another mottled blackbird was some years ago kept in a cage by Mr Veitch, the distinguished optician, at Inchbonny, near Jedburgh. We have seen white crows very often; a white robin, with red eyes; a white sparrow, and a white jack-daw. These accidental varieties, we believe, have existed in almost every species of birds. Sir William Jardine mentions a pair of magpies of a cream colour, which were hatched at a farm-steading in Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. In the Natural History Magazine it is stated, that a greenfinch was shot in the neighbourhood of Ross, Herefordshire, the prevailing colour of which was a rich yellow, mottled with green, yellow, and dirty white.-ED. * Food, climate, and domestication, have a great influence in changing the colour of animals. Hence the varied plumage of almost all our domestic birds. In a wild state, the dark colour of most birds is a great safeguard to them against their enemies. Naturalists suppose that this is the reason why birds, which have a very varied plumage, seldom assume their gay attire till the second or third year, when they have acquired cunning and strength to avoid their enemies.-ED. † In all probability the bearded titmouse.-ED. |