Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/125

Rh long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus ægogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat.

  LETTER XXXVI.

, Sept., 1771

,—The summer through I have seen but two of that large species of bat which I call vespertilio altivolans, from its manner of feeding high in the air; I procured one of them, and found it to be a male; and made no doubt, as they accompanied together, that the other was a female; but, happening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I was somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of the same sex. This circumstance, and the great scarcity of this sort, at least in these parts, occasions some suspicions in my mind whether it is really a species, or whether it may not be the male part of the more known species, one of which may supply many females; as is known to be the case in sheep and some other quadrupeds. But this doubt can only be cleared by a farther examination, and some attention to the sex, of more specimens: all that I know at present is, that my two were amply furnished with the parts of generation, much resembling those of a boar. 