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L E T T E R XV.
TO THE SAME.
DEAR S i f t , Se l b o r h i , March jo , 1768.
S ome intelligent country people have a: notion that we have, in.
thefe parts, a fpecies of the gems mufielinum, befides the weafel, float,,
ferret, and polecat; a little reddilh. beaft, not much bigger than a
field moufe, 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-milkwhite rooks in-
one neft. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able
to fly, threw them down and deftroyed them, to the regret of the
owner, who would have been glad to have preferved fuel! a curi-
ofity in his rookery. I faw the birds myfelf-nailed againft the end.
of a barn, and was furprifed to find that their bills, legs, feet,
and claws were milkwhite.
A Ihepherd faw, as he thought, fome white larks on a down-
above my. houfe this.winter : were, not thefe. th^emberiza nivalis,
the fnow-flake of the Brit. Zool.? - N o doubt they were.
A few years ago I faw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had
been caught in the fields after it was come to it’s full colours;
In about a year it began to look dingy; and, blackening every
fucceeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. It’s
chief food was hempfeed. Such influence has food on the colour
of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domefticated animals
are fuppofed to be owing to high, various,, and unufual food.
I had
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I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint
'(arum) was frequently fcratched out of the dry banks of hedges,
and eaten an fevere fnowy weather. After, obferving, with fome
exaftnefs, myfelf, and getting others to do the fame, we found
it was the thfulh kind that fearched it out. The root of the arum
is remarkably warm and pungent.
Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forfaken us. The
blackbirds and thrulhes are very much thinned down by that
fierce weather in January.
In thé middle of February I difeovered, in my tall hedges, a little
'bird that raifed my curiofity : it was of that yellow-green colour
that belongs to the falicaria kind, and, I think, was foft-billed. It
was no parus ; and was too long and too big for the golden-
crowned wren, appearing moft like the largeffi willow-wren. It
hung fometimes with it’ s back downwards, but never continuing
one moment in the fame placé. I fhot at it, but it was fó
defiiltory that I miffed my aim.
I wonder that the ftone curlew, tharadrius oedicnemus, Ihould bè
mentioned by the writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all the
campaign parts of Hampjhire and SuJfeX, and breeds, I think, all the
fummer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn.
Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I
think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray,
f6 circa aquas ver Jantes for with us, by day at leaft, they haunt
only the moft dry, open, upland fields and fheep walks, far removed
from water : what they may do in the night I cannot fay.
Worms are their ufual food, but they alfo eat toads and frogs.
I can fhew you fome good fpecimens of my new mice. Littnatts
perhaps would call the fpecies mus minimus.
G a