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 that subject is remarkable; there were little short-winged birds frequently coming on board his 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 in an ill humour, being much disgusted at the rude, dissolute manners of the people.

* Some interesting observations respecting birds settling on the rigging of ships will be found in the Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. viii. p. 125, by Mr. Thompson. They were made during a passage from Malta to the Morea, the end of April 1841. As this was just the period of the year when the great movement of migratory birds northwards was taking place, he had many opportunities of seeing them about the ship, in their transit across the Mediterranean. He has given a list of all the species which he noticed, with their several dates in it will be found many of our British summer visitants.-L. J. + See RAY's Travels, p. 466.

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 torquata.

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 neigh

bour 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

* The mouse spoken of in this, and in the last letter, was first brought into notice by White, and is, as he supposes, the smallest of British quadrupeds. It is the Mus messorius of Shaw, and of later English authors, and, probably, the same as the M. minutus of Pallas, who observed it in Russia, about ten years after its first discovery by our author. It has also been observed in Germany by M. Gloger, who has given a detailed account of its nest, in the fourteenth volume of the Transactions of the Leopoldine Academy at Bonn. In our own country it has been repeatedly noticed since White's time, and in many different parts of England: it is very common in Cambridgeshire during harvest, and I have had the nest brought me, with young in it, in the month of July.

It has also been often kept in confinement; and there are several published accounts of its habits, as noticed under such circumstances. The fullest is that by the Rev. W. Bingley in his "Memoirs of British Quadrupeds," to which the reader is referred. It appears that its food is by no means confined to grain, but that it devours flies and other insects, which it seizes with extreme alertness, and seems to prefer to anything else. It is

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 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.

If some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow-deer, and have it dissected, he would find cleanly in its habits, and Mr. Bingley often noticed it in the most graceful and elegant attitudes, cleaning its face, head, and body, with its paws. It is, also, extremely active; and the tail is in a slight degree prehensile, or endued with a muscular power, by which it can be coiled round the stems of plants, to assist it in climbing. Professor Henslow, who has kept one of these mice for more than a twelvemonth in a large deep earthenware pan, having a tall slender stick fixed upright in the centre of the bottom, has particularly noticed the various ways in which the tail is used for this purpose. The above sketches were furnished by him, and drawn from life. Fig. 1. is a representation of the tail, when the animal is at rest upon the stick, with its head downwards. Figs. 2. and 3 are as it appears when in the act of descending. Whenever the animal comes to a knob in the stem, the tail is quickly untwisted, and immediately coiled round again: when descending very fast, the tip only is employed as at Fig. 3. Professor Henslow has sometimes observed the animal jump from the stick, and reach the ground, more than a foot distant from it. - L. J.

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 communication with the nose.* Here

* The exact use of the suborbital sinuses, above spoken of, which are common to a great many species of the deer and antelope kind, has been much inquired into, but nothing positive is as yet known on the subject. White, however, is decidedly wrong in supposing that they serve as breathing-places additional to the nostrils, and that they have any communication with the nose. It has been observed by an eminent anatomist,