PROPENSITY OF AN IDIOT BOY, 



dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of 

 a beautiful bright chestnut colour; and, being soft 

 and pliant, is very proper for the dusting of beds, 

 curtains, carpets, hangings, &c. If these besoms 

 were known to the brush-makers in town, it is pro- 

 bable they might come much in use for the purpose 

 above mentioned *. 



LETTER LXIX. A / Vj 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, December 12, 1775. 



DEAR SIR, 



WE had in this village, more than twenty years 

 ago, an idiot boy, whom I well remember, who, from 

 a child, showed a strong propensity to bees ; they 

 were his food, his amusement, his sole object. And 

 as people of this cast have seldom mo*e than one 

 point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties 

 on this one pursuit. In the winter, he dozed away 

 his time, within his father's house, by the fire-side, 

 in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the 

 chimney corner ; but in the summer he was all alert, 

 and in quest of his game in the fields, and on sunny 

 banks. Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps, were 

 his prey wherever he found them : he had no appre- 

 hensions from their stings, but would seize them 

 with naked hands, and at once disarm them of their 

 weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their 



also for mats, or rugs, which are plaited together, leaving the 

 tops sticking out for two or three inches, and thus making both 

 a warm and useful household appendage. W. J. 



* A besom of this sort is to be seen in Sir Ashton Lever's 

 museum. 



