78 WHITE 



LETTER XXXV 



SELBORNE, 1771. 



DEAR SIR, Happening to make a visit to my neighbor's 

 peacocks, I could not help observing that the trains of those 

 magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails ; those 

 long feathers growing not from their uropygitim, but all up their 

 backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches 

 long, fixed in the uropygium y is the real tail, and serves as the 

 fiilcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when 

 set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird 

 before but his head and neck ; but this would not be the case 

 were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be 

 seen by the turkey cock when in a strutting attitude. By a 

 strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of 

 their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword dancer ; 

 they then trample very quick with their feet, and run back- 

 "wards v tbwards the females. 



I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus 

 cegogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is per- 

 fectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; 

 such are, I think, usually flat. 



LETTER XXXVI 



Sept. 1771. 



DEAR SIR, The summer through I have seen but two of 

 that large species of bat which I call vespertilio altivolans, 

 from its manner of feeding high in the ait ; I procured one of 

 them, and found it to be a male ; and made no doubt, as they 

 accompanied together, that the other was a female ; but, hap- 

 pening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I 

 was somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of 

 the same sex. This circumstance, and the great scarcity of 

 this sort, at least in these parts, occasions some suspicions in 

 my mind whether it is really a species, or whether it may not 

 be the male part of the more known species, one of which 



