OF SELBORNE. 51 
LETTER XII. 
November 4, 1767. 
Sir,—IT gave me no small satisfaction to hear 
that the falco* turned out an uncommon one. [ 
must confess I should have been better pleased to 
have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had 
never seen before ; but that, I find, would be a dif- 
ficult task. 
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in 
my former letters, which I have preserved in bran- 
dy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of 
nesting, | make no doubt but that the species is 
nondescript. ‘They are much smaller and more 
slender than the mus domesticus mediys of Ray, 
and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour. 
Their belly is white; a straight line along their 
sides divides the shades of their back and belly. 
They never enter into houses; are carried into 
ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in har- 
vest; and build their nests amid the straws of the 
corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. 
These little round nests are composed of the blades 
of grass or wheat. 
One of these nests I procured this autumn, most 
artificially platted, and composed of the blades of 
wheat ; perfectly round, and about the size of a 
cricket-ball, with the aperture so ingeniously clo- 
sed that there was no discovering to what part it 
belonged. It was so compact and well filled that 
it would roll across the table without being discom- 
posed, though it contained eight little mice that 
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus—a variety. 
