The Natural History of Selborne 109 



never was informed before where wild-geese are known to 

 breed. 



You admit, I find, that I have proved your/<? salicaria 

 to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray ; and I think you may 

 be secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains to 

 clear up that matter, and had some fair specimens ; but, as 

 they were not well preserved, they are decayed already. You 

 will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next edition. 

 Your additional plates will much improve your work. 



De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew- 

 mouse : but still I am pleased to find you have discovered 

 it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article 

 of the white hare. 



As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry chalky field, 

 far removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that 

 was curiously laid up in an hybernaculum artificially formed 

 of grass and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a 

 gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have 

 supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me 

 is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at 

 such a distance from the water. Was it determined in its 

 choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the 

 potatoes which were planted there ; or is it the constant 

 practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of 

 the water in the colder months ? 



Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, know- 

 ing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history ; yet, 

 in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined to 

 think it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty 

 that I have mentioned before, with respect to the invariable early 

 retreat of the hirundo apus, or swift, so many weeks before its 

 congeners ; and that not only with us, but also in Andalusia, 

 where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August. 



The great large bat * (which by the by is at present a 



* The little bat appears almost every month in the year ; but I have 

 never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are 

 most qpmmon in June, but never in any plenty : are a rare species with us. 



