OF SELBORNE. 49 



Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the 

 end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's head or 

 miller's thumb (Gobius flumatilis capitatus 5 }, the trout 

 (Trutta flumatilis^), the eel ( Anguilla 1 ), the lampern 



uninterrupted view of the seed in the cavity, with the eye on that side to 

 which the under mandible is curved." 



The lateral power of the beak of the cross-bill has called forth expres- 

 sions of astonishment from all who have witnessed its effects. Mr. Town^ 

 son gives some curious instances of them ; and a marked 'evidence of the 

 muscular strength connected with that organ was afforded by a bird kept 

 by Mr. Morgan, which Mr. Yarrell states to have broken off the point 

 of its beak by repeated efforts to draw a flat-headed nail that confined 

 some strong network : it persevered nevertheless, and was eventually 

 successful. A principal occupation with Mr. Morgan's birds was the 

 twisting out of the ends of the wires of their prison, which they accom- 

 plished with equal ease and dexterity : but their repeated success in 

 this operation occasioned the destruction of so many cages that sentence 

 of banishment was at length necessarily passed on those mischievous little 

 beings, whose unceasing delight it seemed to be to disunite all joined 

 substances that were placed within the reach of their bills. E. T. B. 



5 This and the succeeding names of fishes are derived from Ray's 

 Synopsis Avium et Piscium. The use of Ray's names in this department 

 of zoology, rather than of those of Linnaeus, would lead to the suspicion 

 that the author was acquainted with the works of the Swedish master of 

 natural history, through the medium only of the productions of Pennant. 

 At the date of this Letter, the first, or folio, edition of the British Zoology 

 had alone made its appearance ; the first two volumes of the second 

 edition, in quarto and octavo, were in preparation : but these extended 

 no farther than the mammals and birds of Britain. The third volume of 

 the second edition of the British Zoology, in which the fishes were for 

 the first time enumerated, was not published till 1T69. The information 

 in the text was no doubt communicated in answer to queries having for 

 their object the improvement of Pennant's forthcoming work. 



The fish here alluded to is the Coitus Go/no, LINN. E. T. B. 



6 [Salmo Fario, LINN.] 



7 In the absence of some definite character the fish here alluded to 

 cannot be safely referred to any of those species of eels, which a more 

 correct acquaintance with them has rendered it necessary for modern 

 ichthyologists to distinguish in the British rivers. It is to the acuteness 

 of Mr. Yarrell that we are originally indebted for most of our information 

 on this subject, which has been partly communicated through the medium 

 of the Zoological Society, and partly in other detached notices j and more 

 recently, in a defined and systematic form, in the Rev. L. Jenyns's Manual 

 of British Vertebrated Animals. Before this volume is published figures 

 and descriptions of them, by Mr. Yarrell himself, will have appeared in 

 his excellent work on British Fishes. 



E 



