NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 7 1 



makes great havoc among the inhabitants of the waters. Not 

 supposing that we had any of those beasts in our shallow 

 brooks, I was much pleased to see a male otter, brought to 

 me, weighing twenty-one pounds, that had been shot on the 

 bank of our stream below the Priory, where the rivulet divides 

 the parish of Selborne from Harteley Wood. 1 



NOTE 



1 Shy as the otter is, a pair made their home in a hole under some stone- 

 work on the banks of the canal at Llangollen, within six yards of several 

 cottages. 



4 



LETTER XXX 



SELBORNE, Aug. u/, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, The French, I think, in general are strangely 

 prolix in their natural history. What Linnaeus says with re- 

 spect to insects holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas 

 press entis s<zculi> calami tas artis" 



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 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. 



When I was last in town our friend Mr. Harrington most 

 obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. As you 

 were then writing to him about horns, he carried me to see 

 many strange and wonderful specimens. There is, I remem- 

 ber, at Lord Pembroke's at Wilton, a horn room furnished 

 with more than thirty different pairs ; but I have not seen that 

 house lately. 



Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of 

 stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the world. After 

 I had studied over the latter for a time, I remarked that every 

 species almost that came from distant regions, such as South 



