OF SELBORNE. 139 



pleased to see a male otter brought to me, weighing 

 twenty-one pounds, that had been shot on the bank of 

 our stream below the Priory, where the rivulet divides 

 the parish of Selborne from Harteley Wood. 



LETTER XXX. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, Aug. 1, 1770. 



THE French, I think, in general are strangely prolix 

 in their natural history. What Linnaeus says with 

 respect to insects, holds good in every other branch : 

 " Verbositas prcesentis sceculi, calamitas artis." 



Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work? as 

 I admire his Entomologia, I long to see it. 



I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not 

 room to insert in the former) that the male moose, in 

 rutting time, swims from island to island, in the lakes 

 and rivers of North America, in pursuit of the females. 

 My friend, the chaplain, saw one killed in the water as 

 it was on that errand in the river St. Lawrence : it was 

 a monstrous beast, he told me ; but he did not take the 

 dimensions. 



When I was last in town, our friend Mr. Barrington 

 most obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. 

 As you were then writing to him about horns, he car- 

 ried me to see many strange and wonderful specimens. 

 There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, 

 a horn room furnished with more than thirty different 

 pairs : but I have not seen that house lately. 



Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collec- 

 tions of stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the 

 world. After I had studied over the latter for a time, 

 I remarked that every species almost that came from 



