212 PETER COLLINS ON [1757. 



move forward, and some stay behind. For all these wild creatures, 

 of one species, generally seem of one community ; and rather than 

 quarrel, will move still a farther distance, where there is more 

 plenty of food like Abraham and Lot ; but most of our domestic 

 animals are more like their masters : every one contends for his own 

 dunghill, and is for driving all off that come to encroach upon 

 them. 



It is very probable that many kinds of birds, in their migrations, 

 fly out of our sight, so high as to be unobserved, as for instance, 

 our Hooping Cranes, in their passage from Florida to Hudson's Bay. 

 They fly in flocks of about half a score, so exceeding high as 

 scarcely to be observed, but by the particular noise of their loud 

 hooping. We then can but just see them, though so particularly 

 directed where to look for them. * * * 



I want the rest of Hill's English Herbal, that I may have them 

 bound up all together. I have received twenty-one numbers. It 

 seems odd, that in his History of Plants he kept so close to Lin- 

 KZEUS, and now, in this, he pulls him all to pieces, and seemingly 

 with good reason, too. Poor Lixn^us ! He is an industrious * 

 * * [hiatus in MS.'] ; but I always thought he crowded too many 

 species into one genus. 



PETER COLLINSON TO JOHN BARTRAM. 



February, 1757. 



I wish my good friend J. Bartram, would peruse a little tract, 

 called New England's Rarities, by John Josselyn, and see his 

 account of the White Mountain, and Sugar-loaf Mountain, which 

 is very extraordinary. If it was peaceable times, who knows how 

 thou might be tempted to make them a visit ? 



What was his bird, Pilhannaw ? a monstrous great bird. 



He must have a fine palate, and a good digestion, to say a 

 turkey-buzzard was good meat. The porcupine shooting his quills, 

 is a vulgar error. 



Pray see his account of the Moose Deer. They were plenty in 

 his time [1633 1674], in that remote part where his brother 

 lived ; unless he reckons the deer holding up his head with a full- 

 grown pair of horns on, it could not be twelve feet high, by the 

 method of measuring a horse. The width of their horns, and their 



