The natural history of Selborne . ed birds frequently coming on board his shipall the way from our Channel quite up to the Le-vant, especially before squally weather. What you suggest with regard to Spain is highlyprobable. The winters of Andalusia are so mild,that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leaveus at that season may find insects sufficient tosupport them there. Some young man, possessed of fortune, health,and leisure, should make-an autumnal voyage intothat kingdom, and should spend a year there, inves-tigating the natural history of that vast country. OF SELBORNE. 59 Mr.
The natural history of Selborne . ed birds frequently coming on board his shipall the way from our Channel quite up to the Le-vant, especially before squally weather. What you suggest with regard to Spain is highlyprobable. The winters of Andalusia are so mild,that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leaveus at that season may find insects sufficient tosupport them there. Some young man, possessed of fortune, health,and leisure, should make-an autumnal voyage intothat kingdom, and should spend a year there, inves-tigating the natural history of that vast country. OF SELBORNE. 59 Mr. Willoughby passed through that kingdom onsuch an errand; but he seems to have skirtedalong in a superficial manner and an ill humour,being much disgusted at the rude, dissolute mannersof the people. I have no friend left now at Sunbury to applyto about the swallows roosting on the aits of theThames, nor can I hear any more about those birdswhich I suspected were meruIcR torquatcs. As to the small mice,* I have farther to remark,. that, though they hang their nests up amid thestraws of the standing corn, above the ground, yetI find that in the winter they burrow deep in theearth, and make warm beds of grass; but theirgrand rendezvous seems to be in corn-ricks, intowhich they are carried at harvest. A neighbourhoused an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which •? The THUS messorius, harvest-mouse, was first discovered anddescribed by Mr. White. 60 NATURAL HISTORY were assembled near a hundred, most of which weretaken, and some I saw. I measured them, andfound that, from nose to tail, they were just two inch-es and a quarter, and their tails just two inches of them, in a scale, weighed down just one halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounceavoirdupois, so that I suppose they are the smallestquadrupeds in this island. A full-grown mus me-dius domesUcus weighs, I find, one ounce, lumpingweight, which is more than six times as much asthe mouse above, and m
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
