62 NATURAL HISTORY 
Writers, copying from one another, make Aris- 
totle say that goats breathe at their ears, whereas 
he asserts just the contrary: “ AAkualwy yap ovk 
adnOn A€yel, PayEvoc avarvely TAC alyag KaTa TA 
wta. Alecmzon does not advance what is true 
when he avers that goats breathe through their’ 
ears.”— History of Animals, book i., chap. xi. 
LETTER XV. 
Selborne, March 30, 1768. 
Dear Sir,—Some intelligent country people have - 
a notion that we have in these parts a species of 
the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, 
ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much 
bigger than a field-mouse, but much longer, which 
they callacane. This piece of intelligence can be 
little depended on; but farther inquiry may be 
made. 
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk- 
white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, find- 
ing them before they were able to fly, threw them 
down and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, 
who would have been glad to have preserved such 
a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself 
nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised 
to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were 
milk-white. 
A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks 
on a down above my house this winter: were not 
these the emberiza nivalis, the snowflake of the Brit. 
Zool.? No doubt they were. 
