The Natural History of Selborne 369 



of nidification peculiar to itself, so that a school-boy would at 

 once pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the 

 case among fields and woods, and wilds ; but, in the villages 

 round London, where mosses and gossamer, and cotton from 

 vegetables, are hardly to be found, the nest of the chaffinch 

 has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is it so beauti- 

 fully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district ; and the 

 wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry 

 grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness 

 so remarkable in the edifices of that little architect. Again, 

 the regular nest of the house-martin is hemispheric; but 

 where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice, may happen to stand 

 in the way, the nest -is so contrived as to conform to the 

 obstruction, and becomes flat, or compressed. 



In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and 

 consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field- 

 mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Ewopcea), 

 which live much on hazel-nuts ; and yet they open them each 

 in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, 

 splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does 

 with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so 

 regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one 

 would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it; 

 while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill; but 

 as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces 

 it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in 

 some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice ; when, standing over 

 it, he perforates the stubborn shell. We have often placed 

 nuts in the chink of a gate-post where nut-hatches have been 

 known to haunt, and have always found that those birds have 

 readily penetrated them. While at work they make a rapping 

 noise that may be heard at a considerable distance. 



You that understand both the theory and practical part of 

 music- may best inform us why harmony or melody should so 

 strangely affect some men, as it were by recollection, for days 

 after the concert is over. What I mean the following passage 

 will most readily explain : 



