Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/429

Rh the spot where plum-trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty; these were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call this bird Coccothraustes, i.e., berry-breaker, because with its large homy beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, and only in winter.—. I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the hardest winters; at which season of the year I have had in my possession two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in different years.—.

OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS.

sheep on the downs this winter (1769) are very ragged, and their coats much torn; the shepherds say they tear their fleeces with their own mouths and horns, and they are always in that way in mild wet winters, being teased and tickled with a kind of lice.

After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distinguish one another as before. This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from the loss of the fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each individual personally; which also is confounded by the strong scent of pitch and tar wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation recognise each other more from the smell than the sight; and in matters of identity and diversity, appeal much more to their noses than their eyes. After sheep have been washed there is the same confusion, from the reason given above.—.