in the day; and seemed disposed to build in my outlet, but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who never let them be at rest.

Three grosbeaks (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.*

A crossbill (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 (lampatra parva et fluviatilis), and the stickleback (pisciculus aculeatus).

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

Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of

From Miscellaneous Observations. "Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak which he had observed to haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries, gooseberries, and wallfruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop or craw, no buds were to be seen, but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where plum-trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty: these were the stones of damsons. The Latin name signifies berry-breaker, be cause with its large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, and only in winter.

hawks; when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot 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 squab. The last swift I observed was about the 21st of August; it was a straggler.

young.

Redstarts, fly-catchers, whitethroats, and reguli non cristati still appear; but I have seen no blackcaps 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

E

bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything 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 rejected, 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. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware of, but in a most ridiculous and grotesque 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 the 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.

LETTER XII.

November 4, 1767.

SIR, 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 dif ficult task.

I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller and more slender than the mus domesticus medius of Ray, and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour. Their belly is white; a straight line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and build their nests amid the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. These little round nests are composed of the blades of grass or wheat.

One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball, with the aperture so ingeniously closed that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that

* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus-a variety.

were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as to administer food to each? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over; but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which, moreover, would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat-field, suspended in the head of a thistle.

A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had shot one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to expect; but the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the male garrulus Bohemicus, or German silktail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or points which it carries at the ends of five of the short remiges. It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety be called an English bird, and yet I see, by Ray's Philosophical Letters, that great flocks of them, feeding on haws, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.

The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy and common.

Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes and feeding on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the merula torquata,