NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 35 
not only for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which 
are found over them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some 
years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a 
warm summer’s evening, I think I saw myriads of bats between 
the two places; the air swarmed with them all along the Thames, 
so that hundreds were in sight at a time. Iam, &c. 
LEEPER: Xr, 
TO THE SAME. 
Noveneber ath, 1767. 
SIR,—It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco* 
turned out an uncommon one. I 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 difficult task. 
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, 
a young one and a female with young, both of which I have pre- 
served in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of 
nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. 
They are much smaller, and more slender, than the as domesticus 
medius 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 harvest; and 
build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, 
and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, 
in a little round nest 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 
closed, 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 discomposed, though it contained eight little mice 
that were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how 
could the dam come at her litter respectively so as to administer a 
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus ; a variety. 
