30 



NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



pellets, after the manner of hawks. When full, like a dog, it 

 hides what it cannot eat. 



The young of the barn-owl are not easily 

 raised, as they want a constant supply of 

 fresh* mice : whereas the young of the 

 brown-owl will eat indiscriminately all that 

 is brought : snails, rats, kittens, puppies, 

 magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.f 



The house-martins have eggs still, and 

 squab-young. The last swift I observed was 

 about the twenty-first of August : it was a 



Red starts, fly catchers, white throats, and reguli non cristati,\ 

 still appear ; but I have seen no black caps lately. 



I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ-church-college 

 quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house- 

 martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 

 twentieth of November. 



Common Bat. Long Eared Bat. 



At present I know only two species of bats, the common 

 vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auribus. 



I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which 



* This fact in the economy of the tawny-hooter, or brown-owl (aluco stridula) which is not 

 mentioned in any of the histories of it that I have seen, I am enabled to corroborate from re- 

 peated observation. It always, when at liberty, buries the superfluity of a meal, scraping up the 

 ground with its claws ; and I have known it when hungry to return to its hoard, and avail itself 

 of its instinctive foresight. ED. 



t Barn-owls are easily enough raised, if taken sufficiently young. The wild adults of this 

 species are by no means such general feeders as the brown-owls. ED. 



t Reguli non cristati. The different " willow-wrens," as they are often called, or species of 

 the pettychaps-genus (sylvia, as now restricted), are here intended. It is remarkable that "the 

 common gray fly-catcher, one of the very latest of our migrant birds to appear in spring, is also 

 one of the last to depart in autumn ; the contrary being the case with the garden-fan vet, swift, 

 and most other species which are backward in their arrivals. The circumstance appears expli- 

 cable from the nature cf its food, winged insects being much more abundant at the close of 

 autumn than in the spring. ED. 



Mr. White here means the pepistrelle-bat by the term murinus, a mistake into which almost 

 every British naturalist has fallen. The true V. murinus is a very large species, fifteen inches in 



