44 NATURAL HISTORY 



Ray observed that, at Malta, the owners slit up the nostrils of 

 such asses as were hard worked : for they, being naturally 

 strait or small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when 

 they travelled or laboured in that hot climate. And we know 

 that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils 

 necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses *. 

 Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to 

 have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : 



(t TfTpadvfjioi 'pivfS) TTKrvpes Trvoirjcri 



" Quadrifidse nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." 



Opp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. 181. 



Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that 

 goats breathe at their ears ; whereas he asserts just the con- 

 trary : ' ' AXfCfjLcuwv yap ov/c a\r}6rj \e<yei,, c^ayu-evo? avatrveiv 

 " ra? aiyas /cara ra GOTO," " Alcmceon does not advance what 

 " is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears." 

 History of Animals. Book I. chap. xi. 



LETTER XV. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, March 30, 1768. 

 DEAR SIR, 



SOME intelligent country people have a notion that we have, 

 in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the 

 weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little reddish ' beast, not 

 much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they 

 call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended 

 on ; but farther inquiry may be made f. 



* [The view taken by White both of the structure and use of these 

 cavities or glands is entirely erroneous. They have no relation to the 

 function of respiration. See Owen's description of them in the Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1836, and Mr. Bennett's observations in his edition of this 

 work, p. 73-74. T. B.] 



t [The cane or kine (for I have heard it designated by both names) 



