56 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, July 27, 1768. 



DEAR SIB, 



I RECEIVED your obliging and communicative letter of June 

 the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house, where 

 I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to re- 

 turn you an answer to many queries, which I wanted to resolve 

 in the best manner that I am able. 



A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could 

 find no such fish as the gasterosteus pungitius : he found the 

 gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, 

 I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some 

 sticklebacks, male and female ; the females big with spawn : 

 some lamperns ; some bulls heads ; but I could procure no 

 minnows. This basket will be in Fleet-street by eight this 

 evening ; so I hope Mazel * will have them fresh and fair to- 

 morrow morning. I gave some directions, in a letter, to 

 what particulars the engraver should be attentive. 



Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reason- 

 able distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that 



one of the former has been seen ; and no cause has ever suggested itself 

 for its disappearance. Its voice was far more powerful and resonant than 

 that of any of its congeners, and could be heard at a great distance, re- 

 sembling almost deceptively that of the night-jar; it was, however, only 

 heard during the breeding-season. Another remarkable peculiarity was 

 its fondness for hot and dry situations : one in particular took its station 

 under a stone close to a south wall, and was frequently seen peeping out 

 from its hiding-place, and if taken up in the hand would immediately re- 

 sume its position upon being placed on the ground. I have seen hundreds 

 of young ones not larger than the finger-nail on the heath at Wolmer, 

 not far from the pond, where doubtless they had been bred. The pal- 

 mated smooth newt formerly inhabited a pond on the common ; but I have 

 not seen it for some years. T. B.] 



* [Peter Mazell, the engraver of the plates in Pennant's ' British 

 Zoology,' and of three of those in the original edition of this work, 

 namely the two of the church and that of the Plestor, T. B.] 



