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 shewed 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 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.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

November 4, 1767.

Ir 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.

horse-shoe bat, (r. hipposideros,) discovered by the same gentleman in Wiltshire and Devonshire; the common bat, the emarginated bat, (vespertilio emarginatus,) discovered by Dr Fleming in Fife; the great bat, (v. noctula,) of our author; the eared bat, (plecotus auritus,) of Pennant; and the barbed bat, (p. burbastellus,) found in Devonshire by Colonel Montagu, and at Dartford, in Kent, by Mr Peel. - ED.

Mr John Greig, author of the Heavens Displayed, &c. saw a bat flying about in February, in England, during a very hard frost and deep snow.ED.

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

MICE-GERMAN SILK-TAIL.

29

I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters,- -a young one, and a female with young, both of 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 amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest 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 were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as to administer a teat 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 silk-tail, 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.*

*This beautiful bird (the ampelis garrula of Temminck) is a frequent visitor of Britain, and always appears in flocks. The Rev. Perceval Hunter mentions a flock of them having been seen in Kent in 1828. Bewick remarks that great numbers were taken in Northumberland in the years 1789 and 1790. In 1810, large flocks were dispersed through

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, or ringousel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success.

Query-Might not Canary birds be naturalized to this climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of their congeners, as gold-finches, green-finches, &c.? Before winter, perhaps, they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves.*

About ten years ago, I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn I could not help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in the osierbeds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his Calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallow's going under water in the beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a little before sunset.+

various districts of Britain. Mr Selby mentions some having been observed in 1822; and one was shot at Edinburgh, in December 1830; another was shot at Coventry; and, during the years 1829, 1830, and 1831, there have been recorded no fewer than twenty specimens, killed in the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. -Ed.

* Various experiments have been tried to naturalize Canary birds in Britain, but they have all proved abortive. -ED.

† Our author seems strongly inclined to the doctrine of the submersion of the swallow tribe during winter; but the temperature of places situated at great depths below the surface of the land and water, is sufficient objection to the circumstance of birds remaining in a torpid state, during the winter, in solitary caverns, or at the bottom of deep lakes, as many authors have affirmed.

It is an established fact, that all places situated eighty feet below the surface of the earth are constantly of the same temperature. In these