The Natural History of Selborne 353 



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 beautifully 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 com- 

 pactness 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 con- 

 sistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and 

 the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europ<ea), 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 : 



" Praehabebat porrb vocibus humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis 

 musicam illam avium : non quod alia quoque non delectaretur : sed 



z 



