Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history; yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the Hirundo apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners; and that not only with us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August.

The great large bat' (which by the by is at present a nondescript in England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires or migrates very early in the summer; it also ranges very high for its food, feeding in a different region of the air; and that is the reason I never could procure one. Now this is exactly the case with the swifts; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would conclude that these Hirundines, and the larger bats, are supported by some sorts of highflying gnats, scarabs, or Phalaene, that are of short continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food.

By my journal it appears that curlews' clamoured on to October the thirty-first: since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows were observed on to November the third.

1 The little bat appears almost every month in the year; but I have never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are most common in June, but never in any plenty; are a rare species with us.-G. W.

2 Stone-curlews, Edicnemus crepitans. The true curlew, Numenius arcuatus, was not observed at Selborne.-ED.

LETTER XXVII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

H

SELBORNE, Feb. 22, 1770.

EDGEHOGS abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass walks is very curious with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched.

:

In this respect

they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the walks in some measure by digging little round holes.' It appears, by the dung that

The author of the "Letters of Rusticus" discovered this to be a mistake. He found that it was not the hedgehog but a night-eating caterpillar. He says:-" In a grass walk I saw some flattened plants of the common plantain withering and half dead; by the side of each I found the hole bored, as White supposed, by the long upper mandible of Hoggy,' but it was scarcely big enough to admit a lead pencil, and

6

they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which appeared to be about five or six days old: they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. No doubt their pines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or else the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of parturition: but it is plain that they soon harden; for these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. Their spines are quite white at this age; and they have little hanging ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces; but are not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do, for the sake of defence, when full grown. The reason, I suppose, is, because the curious muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up in a ball was not then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedgehogs make a deep and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they conceal themselves for the winter: but I never could find that they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.

I have discovered an anecdote with respect to the fieldfare (Turdus pilaris), which I think is particular enough: this bird, though it sits on trees in the daytime, and procures the greatest part of its food from whitethorn hedges; yea, moreover, builds on very high trees, as may be seen by the Fauna Suecica; yet always appears with us to roost on the ground. They are seen to come in flocks just before it is dark, and to settle and nestle among the heath on our forest. And besides, the larkers, in dragging their nets by night, frequently catch them in the wheat-stubbles; while the bat-fowlers, who take many redwings in the hedges,

so round and smooth that I said directly to myself, ''tis the burrow of a night-eating caterpillar.' I got a trowel and in a trice the fellow was unearthed; and he afterwards turned to a 'ghost moth' or 'yellow underwing,' I cannot say which, for both came out in one cage."-ED

never entangle any of this species. Why these birds, in the matter of roosting, should differ from all their congeners, and from themselves also with respect to their proceedings by day, is a fact for which I am by no means able

to account.

I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the moose deer; but in general foreign animals fall seldom in my way: my little intelligence is confined to the narrow sphere of my own observations at home.

LETTER XXVIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, March, 1770. N Michaelmas-day, 1768, I managed to get a sight of the female moose belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood; but was greatly disappointed, when I arrived at the spot, to find that it died, after having appeared in a languishing way for some time, on the morning before. However, understanding that it was not stripped, I proceeded to examine this rare quadruped. I found it in an old green-house, slung under the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture; but though it had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid a state that the stench was hardly supportable. The grand distinction between. this deer, and any other species that I have ever met with, consisted in the strange length of its legs, on which it was tilted up much in the manner of the birds of the Gralla order. I measured it, as they do a horse, and found that, from the ground to the wither, it was just five feet four inches; which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth that few horses arrive at: but then, with this length of legs, its neck was remarkably short, no more than twelve inches; so that, by straddling with one foot forward, and the

other backward, it grazed on the plain ground, with the greatest difficulty, between its legs; the ears were vast and lopping, and as long as the neck; the head was about twenty inches long and ass-like, and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is very reasonable to suppose that this creature sup. ports itself chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading after water plants; towards which way of livelihood the length of legs and great lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that it delights in eating the Nymphaea, or water-lily. From the fore feet to the belly behind the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches: the length of the legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was strangely long; but, in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; the colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four inches long; the fore hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it was only two years old, so that most probably it was not then come to its growth. What a vast tall beast must a full grown stag be! I have been told some arrive at ten and a-half feet! This poor creature had at first a female companion of the same species, which died the spring before. In the same garden was a young stag, or red deer, between whom and this moose it was hoped that there might have. been a breed; but their inequality of height must have always been a bar to this. I should have been glad to have examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, &c. minutely; but the putrefaction precluded all farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. In the house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which had no front antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags on the edge.

1 They belong, moreover, to very distinct genera of the Cervide. In addition to the peculiarities of form described by Gilbert White, the moose has broadly palmated horns instead of a rounded stem and antlers as in the red deer.-ED.