OF SELBORNE. 51 



We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as 

 many from a great river, and therefore see but little of 

 seabirds. As to wild fowls, we have a few teams of 

 ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed ; and 

 multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather fre- 

 quent our lakes in the forest. 



Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, 

 I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers 

 of birds, in pellets, after the manner of fiawks : 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, mag- 

 pies, and any kind of carrion or offal. 



The house-martins have eggs still, and squab-young. 

 The last swift I observed was about the twenty-first of 

 August ; it was a straggler. 



Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and Reguli 

 non cristati, still appear ; but I have seen no blackcaps 

 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 parapets, so late as the twentieth of November. 



both above and below it, for the protection of the otherwise naked sides 

 of the fish, are extended along the whole of the side as far as the caudal 

 fin, it is the rough-tailed stickle-back, Cast, trachurus, Cuv. and VAL. : 

 if these bony plates do not extend farther backwards than the line of the 

 vent, it is the half-armed stickle-back, Gast. semiarmatus, Cuv. and VAL.: 

 if the lateral plates reach no farther backwards than the end of the 

 pectoral fin, it is either the smooth-tailed stickle-back, Gast. leiurus, Cuv. 

 and VAL., with the dorsal spines or stickles about one-sixth of the height 

 of the body ; or the short-spined stickle-back, Gast. brachycentrus , Cuv. 

 and VAL., with the dorsal spines not more than one-twelfth of the height 

 of the body. The latter is the largest of the stickle-backs found in the 

 United Kingdom : it occurs in the north of Ireland. 



Including the ten-spined species, six distinct kinds of stickle-backs 

 are now known to inhabit the fresh waters of these islands ; and there are 

 few situations in which four of them, or at the least three, may not be 

 caught in the ponds and rivers. E. T. B. 



E2 



