100 NATURAL HISTORY 



admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I 

 have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mouse- 

 traps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in 

 apples left on the ground, and be well entertained with the 

 seeds on the head of a sun-flower*. The blue, marsh, and 

 great titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley 

 and oat straws from the sides of ricks. 



How the wheat-ear and whin-chat support themselves in 

 winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their 

 time on wild heaths and warrens ; the former especially, where 

 there are stone quarries : most probably it is that their main- 

 tenance arises from the aurelwe of the lepidoptera ordo, which 

 furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XLII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, March 9, 1775. 



DEAR SIR, 



SOME future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I hope, extend 

 his visits to the kingdom of Ireland; a new field, and a coun- 

 try little known to the naturalistf. He will not, it is to be 

 wished, undertake that tour unaccompanied by a botanist, be- 

 cause the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently examined; 

 and the southerly counties of so mild an island may possibly 

 afford some plants little to be expected within the British do- 

 minions. A person of a thinking turn of mind will draw 

 many just remarks from the modern improvements of that 

 * [It is amusing to see the blue titmouse taking the seeds of the gar- 

 den poppy. It lays hold of the stem with both feet just below the ripe 

 poppy-head, and, picking a hole in each cell of the capsule in succession, 

 receives the seed which falls from it. I have often witnessed this clever 

 act, and have seen the capsule with a hole neatly pierced in the under 

 part of each cell. T. JB.] 



^ t [Both the botany and zoology of Ireland have been well investigated 

 since White's time, It was a matter of particular interest with him, and 

 forms the subject of a still more pressing letter to Pennant than this 

 T.B.] 



