1771 MOEE BIEDS AERIVE 197 



do well to have two columns of thermometer observations, 

 especially as 1769 and 1770 were both on the extremes. 

 As matter flows in upon me I begin to think of composing a 

 Natural History of Selborne in the form of a journal for 

 1769 : we shall then be able to compare the climates. You 

 mention the great eagle owl, and send me, I think, a wing 

 and claw of that majestic bird; and yet you call it Strix 

 oius; sure you mean Strix hubo ; the ohis is our common 

 horned owl. I see none of your plants ; perhaps they are 

 lost : the sweet-smelling clammy shrub must be, I suppose, 

 a cistus; has it not a single, rose-like, fugacious flower? 

 You have classed all your last fine cargo of birds so justly, 

 that there is no room for objection. Where you doubt, 

 I doubt : though I think there is little room to doubt about 

 the Alauda cristata: but the pair of birds (if they are a 

 pair) which, I suppose, you call Alauda twu cristata, seem 

 rather some species of the genus of Moiacilla. Get the 

 Pratincola when you can. At present I am a stranger 

 to your (Enanihe, The Oriolus galhula must be a fine bird 

 when in perfection. Your barometer fluctuates much more 

 than I could have expected in so warm a climate and low 

 a latitude : in the tropics it hardly varies at all. Your last 

 quail seems to be a male, the former a female. You will 

 pardon the didactic air of my letters, which in our present 

 way of correspondence is perhaps unavoidable. The wing 

 of the Strix hubo is "remigihus primorihus serratis" : had 

 Linn, remarked that, he would not have made that a specific 

 difference to his Strix aluco. See ' Fauna Suec.,' p. 25. 

 I am, &c., &c. 



