58 WHITE ROOKS. 



LETTER XV. 



TO THE SAME. 



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 call a 

 cane. 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 my- 

 self nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised 

 to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws, were 

 milk- white, f 



A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks 

 on a down above my house this winter : were not 

 these the emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the 

 Brit. Zool. ? No doubt they were. 



* The peasants in the south of Ireland speak also of occa- 

 sionally meeting such an animal ; I made many efforts to procure 

 a specimen, but in vain, those brought me as such were the 

 common weasel. W. C. T. 



f The common rook, corvus frugilegus, seems to be more 

 subject to a white variation than its other British congeners. 

 Specimens entirely white are not often seen, but individuals 

 with parts of the wings and tail pure white, occur in almost 

 every rookery. A pair of magpies, entirely of a cream 

 colour, were hatched at a farm-steading in Eskdale, Dum- 

 fries-shire, arid, being much thought of by the tenant, were 

 strictly preserved, and continued near the spot for many years. 

 W. J. 



