OF SELBORNE 73 



to insects holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas 

 prae sends saeculi, calamitas artis.^^ 



Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work ? As 

 I admire his Entomologia, I long to see it. 



I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not room 

 to insert in the former) that the male moose, in rutting 

 time, swims from island to island, in the lakes and rivers 

 of North-America, in pursuit of the females. My friend, 

 the chaplain, saw one killed in the water as it was on that 

 errand in the river St. Lawrence : it was a monstrous beast, 

 he told me ; but he did not take the dimensions. 



When I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington 

 most obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. 

 As you were then writing to him about horns, he carried 

 me to see many strange and wonderful specimens. There 

 is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, an horn 

 room furnished with more than thirty different pairs ; but 

 I have not seen that house lately. 



Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections 

 of stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the world. 

 After I had studied over the latter for a time, I remarked 

 that every species almost that came from distant regions, 

 such as South America, the coast of Guinea, etc. were 

 thick-billed birds of the loxia and fringilla genera ; and no 

 motacillae^ or muscicapae, were to be met with. When I 

 came to consider, the reason was obvious enough ; for the 

 hard-billed birds subsist on seeds, which are easily carried 

 on board ; while the soft-billed birds, which are supported 

 by worms and insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, 

 fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in long and tedious 

 voyages. It is from this defect of food that our collec- 

 tions (curious as they are) are defective, and we are 

 deprived of some of the most delicate and lively genera. 



I am, etc. 



