It pleases me to find that white hares are so frequent on the Scottish mountains, and especially as you inform me that it is a distinct species, for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that every new species is a great acquisition.
The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so majestic a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I never was informed before where wild geese are known to breed.
You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray; and I think you may be secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains to clear up that matter, and had some fair specimens, but, as they were not well preserved, they are decayed already. You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next edition. Your additional plates will much improve your work.
De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse; but still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article of the white hare.
As a neighbour was lately ploughing a dry, chalky field, far removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was curiously lain up in a hybernaculum
artificially formed of grass and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there, or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the water in the colder months?
Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history, yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the hirundo apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners; and that not only with us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August.
The great large bat (which, by-the-bye, is at present a nondescript 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 phalœnæ, that are of short continuance, and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food.
By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October 31st, since which I have not seen nor heard any. Swallows were observed on to November 3rd.