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hear any more about those birds which I suspected were Merula torquata.1

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 domesticus medius 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.

2

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 vegetation in general must have suffered prodigiously. There is reason to believe that some days were more severe than any since the year 1739-40.1

1 See anteà, p. 44.

2 It is perhaps not generally known that the tail of the harvest mouse is prehensile, and is in consequence of great service to the little animal when descending the wheat stalks amongst which its nest is usually suspended. In "The Zoologist" for 1843, p. 289, will be found a woodcut in illustration of this fact as observed by the Rev. Pemberton Bartlett.-ED.

3 A full account of the effects of this short but intense frost will be found in Letter LXI. to the Hon. Daines Barrington.

LETTER XIV.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, March 12, 1768. F 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 tot he 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 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.1

1 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."-G. W.

Both White and Pennant, however, were here misled by appearances, for it has since been shown by anatomical investigation, that there is no communication between those cavities and the nostrils, they being rather the site of a peculiar secretion. Dr. Jacob, in a paper "On the infraorbital cavities in deer and antelopes," published in the "Edinburgh

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Mr. Ray observed that, at Malta, the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked; for they, being naturally straight 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. Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula.

Τετράδυμοι ρίνες, πίσυρες πνοιῆσι δίαυλοι.

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Quadrifida nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." OPP. Cyn. lib. ii. 1. 181 Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears; whereas he asserts just the contrary :-Αλκμαίων γὰρ οὐκ ἀληθῆ λέγει, φάμενος ἀναπνεῖν τὰς αἶγας κατὰ τὰ ὦτα. "Alcmæon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears."-History of Animals, Book I. chap. xi.1

Philosophical Journal" for October, 1835, says: "The passage of air through these cavities cannot take place, as they are perfectly impervious towards the nostril; but I have no doubt that the fact stated [by White] is correct; the air which escapes passing not through the infra-orbital sacs, but through the lachrymal passages, which are very large, consisting of two openings capable of admitting the end of a crow's quill, the entrance to a tortuous canal, which conducts the tears to the extremity of the nose. Introducing a pipe into the outlet of the nasal duct, at the extremity of the nose, I can without difficulty force a current of air or water through the nasal duct [Quære, lachrymal sinus.— ED.] and it therefore appears reasonable to admit that the effect observed [by White], arose from the animal forcing the air into the nostrils while the nose and mouth were immersed in water."-ED.

1 It is possible that this idea may have originated in the possession by the chamois of post-auditory sinuses; the openings of which behind the base of the ears may have been regarded as orifices for breathing, in the same manner as a similar function was erroneously ascribed to the suborbital sinuses. There is more reason in the supposition that the ears communicate with the nose, than that the suborbital sinus has any such communication; since in all animals that have a tympanic cavity opening upon the surface by an external passage, there is another conduit termed the Eustachian tube, leading inwards from the tympanum to the nose, the use of which is to regulate the pressure of the atmosphere upon the membrana tympani, and to convey superfluous moisture to the nose.-ED.

S

LETTER XV.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, March 30, 1768.

OME 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.1

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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

Cane is a provincial name for the female of the common weasel, which is usually one-fourth smaller than the male.-ED.

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 snowflake, the Emberiza nivalis of the British Zoology? No doubt they were.

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 cuckoopint (Arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten 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 yellow-green 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.

1 By Salicaria, White evidently means the willow-wren group, and not the reed warblers, to which the generic term Salicaria is often applied.-ED.

2 It was probably the Chiff-chaff, although the date mentioned would be an unusually early one at which to find this hardy little bird here. In 1872, the Chiff-chaff was seen at Torquay on the 2nd March, and at Chudleigh and Taunton on the 9th of that month.-ED.

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