io8 The Natural History of Selborne 



a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I 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 Buffbn, 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, knowing 

 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 nondescript 

 in England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires 



* 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 common 

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



