OF SELBORNE. 33 



We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many 

 from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. 

 As to wild fowls, we have a few teams of ducks bred in the 

 moors whero the snipes breed ; and multitudes of widgeons 

 and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in the forest. 



Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find 

 that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in 

 pellets, after the manner of hawks : when full, like a dog, it 

 hides what it cannot eat. 



The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they 

 want a constant supply of fresh mice : whereas the young of 

 the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought ; 

 snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion 

 or offal. 



The house-martins have eggs still, and squab-young. The 

 last swift I observed was about the twenty-first -of August; it 

 was a straggler. 



Red-starts , fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cris- 

 tati, still appear ; but I have seen no black-caps lately. 



I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church col- 

 lege quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a 

 house martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late 

 as the twentieth of November. 



At present I know only two species of bats, the common 

 vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auritus *. 



only one which I am aware of as inhabiting the stream at Selborne is the 

 common three-spined Gasterosteus trachurus, Yarrell, i. p. 76. The habits 

 of the species are very amusing. The males are exceedingly pugnacious ; 

 and the jealous and watchful bravery with which the nest enclosing the 

 spawn is guarded by the male, renders him one of the most interesting 

 objects for the freshwater aquarium. T. B.] 



* [The bats which I have found at Selborne, are the Noctule (SeotcpkUm 

 noctula), the Pipistrelle (Sc. pipistrellus), the reddish-grey bat (VespertHio 

 Nateren), Daubenton's bat ( V. Daubentonii), and the long-eared bat 

 (Plecotus auritus). Of the first of these White was undoubtedly the first 

 observer in this country ; and he was not sufficiently acquainted with the 

 zoological literature of the continent to be aware that as early as 1759 

 Daubenton had described it in the Memoirs of the Academy, with a figure 

 of its head, and that BufFon had subsequently, but before White's discovery, 

 given it a place in his great work, with a plate (vol. viii. p. 128, pi. 18. f. 1) ; 



D 



