NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



female is sitting; she can shift her young when danger is near, 

 she probably rolls them away with her wings. Goat-suckers 

 like to have their nest in the hollow made by a horse's or 

 cow's hoof. They devour large quantities of beetles. 



It does not seem likely that this bird should use its foot 

 to catch beetles ; the mouth is evidently adapted to take any 

 sized beetle. If one of them be shot the beetles may be found 

 alive in the pouch, especially when they are feeding their 

 young. These birds make very fair progress on the boughs of the 

 trees; they shuffle, not walk, along the branches. This is one of the 

 very lew birds Mr. Davy has not succeeded in keeping long. Mr. 

 Searle informs me that the cockchafers are very small in Berk- 

 shire, but in Hampshire they are large. Mr. Davy says that in 

 the neighbourhood of London you get cockchafers both large and 

 small about Hampstead, and especially Lord Mansfield's wood 

 there. 



Colonel Leathes kindly sent me in the summer of 1875 two 

 young fern-owls, taken from the nest in his woods near Yar- 

 mouth. I fed them on scraped beef and hard-boiled eggs, and 

 they lived some weeks; they were very tame. The bristles 

 round the sides of the mouth to assist in catching insects are 

 very remarkable. 



INDIAN GRASS, p. 73. It is quite evident that silkworm gut, 

 now so common, was not much known to anglers in the 

 time of White. At the present time it forms the most important 

 item, next to the hooks, in an angler's tackle. I do not 

 think that Izaak Walton, who died in 1683, used much 

 gut. 



The gut is secreted from a fluid, contained in two long 

 vessels lying at the side of the stomach of the silkworm ; these 

 terminate in a single tube in the centre of the lower lip of 

 the caterpillar, who spins it as he wishes. It is probable 

 that each thread of silk is double, half being secreted from 

 one of the vessels above described, and the other half from 

 its neighbour. 



All the treatises upon silk and silkworms, as well as those 

 relating to animal products, to which I have access are 

 singularly silent upon the subject of silkworm gut, for the 

 simple reason, I suppose, that the authors knew nothing about 

 the history of the subject. In my youthful days I used to 

 make the silkworm gut myself. A silkworm must be watched 

 until he is just beginning to spin. He must then be placed 

 in ordinary vinegar and allowed to soak some forty-eight 

 hours or longer. The operator must then take hold of its 



