86 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XXX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Aug. \st, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, 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 pnzsentis scECiili, 

 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 carried me to see many strange and 

 wonderful specimens. There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, 

 at Wilton, an horn room furnished with more than thirty different 

 pairs ; but I have not seen that house lately. 



Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections 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 distant regions, such as South America, the coast of 

 Guinea, &c., were thick-billed birds of the loocia and fringilla 

 genera ; and no motacillce, or muscicapa t were to be met with. 

 When I came to consider, the reason was obvious enough ; for the 

 hard-billed birds subsist on seeds which are easily carried on board ; 

 while the soft-billed birds, which are supported by worms and 

 insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, fresh raw meat, can 

 meet with neither in long and tedious voyages. It is from this 

 defect of food that our collections (curious as they are) are defective, 

 and we are deprived of some of the most delicate and lively 

 genera. I am, &c. 



