XXXVI.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



107 



quadrupeds, among whom, in their younger days, the sexes 

 differ but little; but, as they advance to maturity, horns and 

 shaggy manes, beards and brawny necks, &c., strongly discrimi- 

 nate the male from the female. We may instance still further 

 in our own species, where a beard and stronger features are 

 usually characteristic of the male sex ; but this sexual diversity 

 does not take place in earlier life, for a beautiful youth shall 

 be so like a beautiful girl that the difference shall not be 

 discernible : 



" Qnera si puellarum insereres choro, 

 Mire sagaces falleret hospites 

 Discrimen obscurnm, solutis 

 Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu." 



HOR. (n. v. 21-24.) 



" A fellow who, if you put him among a parcel of girls, the difficulty of 

 distinguishing him from them would puzzle a very quick-sighted host, 

 thanks to his long hairs and smooth ambiguous face." 



SELBORNE, May 21, 1770. 



LETTER XXXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



THE French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their 

 natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect to insects 

 holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas prsesentis sseculi, 

 calamitas artis." " The verbosity of the present generation is the 

 calamity of art." 



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 it 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. 



