Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/117

Rh pounds, that had been shot on the bank of our stream below the Priory, where the rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from Harteley Wood. 1

1 Shy as the otter is, a pair made their home in a hole under some stonework on the banks of the canal at Llangollen, within six yards of several cottages.

 

LETTER XXX.

, Aug. 1st, 1770

,—The French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their natural history. What Linnæus says with respect to insects holds good in every other branch: "Verbositas præsentis sæculi, calamitas artis."

Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work? As I admire his "Entomologia," I long to see it.

I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not room to insert in the former) that the male moose, in rutting time, swims from island to island, in the lakes and rivers of North America, in pursuit of the females. My friend, the chaplain, saw one killed in the water as it was on that errand in the river St. Lawrence: it was a monstrous beast, he told me; but he did not take the dimensions.

When I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington most obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. As you were then writing to him about horns, he carried me to see many strange and wonderful specimens. There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's at Wilton, a horn room furnished with more than thirty different pairs; but I have not seen that house lately.

Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the world. After I had studied over the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that came from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of Guinea, etc., were thick-billed birds of the