66 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



majestic a bird that it would grace our fauna much. I never 

 was informed before where wild-geese are known to breed. 



You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria 

 to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray ; and 1 think that 

 you may be secure that I am right ; for I took very 

 particular pains to clear up that matter, and had some fair 

 specimens ; but, as they were not well preserved, they are 

 decayed already. You will, no doubt, insert it in its 

 proper place in your next edition. Your additional plates 

 will much improve your work. 



De Bujffbn, I know, has described the water shrew- 

 mouse : but still I am pleased to find you have discovered 

 it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article 

 on the white hare. 



As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry chalky 

 field, far removed from any water, he turned out a 

 water-rat, that was curiously laid up in an hyhemaculum 

 artificially formed of grass and leaves. At one end of the 

 burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on 

 which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But 

 the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came to 

 fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. 

 Was it determined in its choice of that place by the mere 

 accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there ; 

 or is it the constant practice of the aquatic-rat to forsake 

 the neighbourhood of the water in the colder months } 



Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, 

 knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history; 

 yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined 

 to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a 

 difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the 

 invariable early retreat of the hirundo apus, or swift, so 

 many weeks before its congeners ; and that not only with 

 us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire 

 about the beginning of August. 



The great large bat^ (which by the by is at present a 



* The little bat appears almost every month in the year ; but I have 

 never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are 

 most common in June, but never in any plenty : are a rare species with us. 



