where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August.

The great large bat* (which by the by is at present a non-descript 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 high-flying gnats, scarabs, or phalana, that are of short continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food.

*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.

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.

LETTER XXVII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR;

SELBORNE, Feb. 22, 1770.

HEDGE-HOGS abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass-walk 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 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 hedge-hogs, 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 spines 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. Hedge-hogs 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 day-time, and procures the greatest part of its food from white-thorn 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 batfowlers, who take many red-wings in the hedges, 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 THE SAME.

DEAR SIR;

ON

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