l6 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leave us that 

 season may find insects sufficient to support them there. 



Some young man, possessed of fortune, health, and 

 leisure, should make an autumnal voyage into that king- 

 dom ; and should spend a year there, investigating the 

 natural history of that vast country. Mr. Willughby^ 

 passed through that kingdom on such an errand ; but he 

 seems to have skirted along in a superficial manner and an 

 ill humour, being much disgusted at the rude dissolute 

 manners of the people. 



I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about 

 the swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames : nor can 

 I hear any more about those birds which I suspected were 

 merulae torquatae. 



As to the small mice, I have farther to remark, that though 

 they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of 

 the standing corn, above the ground ; yet I find that, in 

 the winter they burrow deep in the earth, and make warm 

 beds of grass : but their grand rendezvous seems to be in 

 corn-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A 

 neighbour housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of 

 which were assembled near an hundred, most of which were 

 taken ; and some I saw. I measured them; and found that, 

 from nose to tail, they were just two inches and a quarter, 

 and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in a 

 scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is 

 about the third of an ounce avoirdupois : so that I suppose 

 they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full- 

 grown mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce, 

 lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as 

 the mouse above ; and measures from nose to rump four 

 inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail. 



We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this 

 month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees 

 and an half below the freezing point, within doors. The 

 tender evergreens were injured pretty m.uch. It was very 

 providential that the air was still, and the ground well 

 covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have 



^ See Ray's Travels, p. 466, 



