Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/54

 part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled, that it would roll across the tame 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 end 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 Philosoph. Letters, that great flocks of them, feeding upon hews, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.

The mention of hews put 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 missal-thrushes, and feeding on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the merula torquata, or ring-ousel, were lately seen in this