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 loxia and fringilla genera; and no motacillæ, or muscicapæ, were to be met with. When I came to consider, the reason was obvious enough, for the hard-billed birds subsist on seeds which are easily carried on board, while the soft-billed birds, which are supported by worms and insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in long and tedious voyages. It is from this defect of food that our collections (curious as they are) are defective, and we are deprived of some of the most delicate and lively genera.
I am, etc.
LETTER XXXI.
Selborne, Sept. 14th, 1770.
Dear Sir,—You saw, I find, the ring-ousels again among their native crags, and are farther assured that they continue resident in those cold regions the whole year. From whence then do our ring-ousels migrate so regularly every September, and make their appearance again, as if in their return, every April? They are more early this year than common, for some were seen at the usual hill on the fourth of this month.
An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they frequent some parts of Dartmoor, and breed there, but leave those haunts about the end of September, or beginning of October, and return again about the end of March.
Another intelligent person assures me that they breed in great abundance all over the peak of Derby, and are called there tor-ousels, withdraw in October and November, and return in spring. This information seems to throw some light on my new migration.