xviii INTRODUCTION 



indigenous to Virginia, it was not peculiar to America, and 

 first reached Europe from Asia. The account of the Rein- 

 deer collects many miscellaneous observations from books, 

 and notes some facts respecting a reindeer which was kept 

 three years at Homerton. The essay on the " Bat or Rere- 

 Mouse" owes all its interest to some observations on the 

 hibernation of bats, communicated by Mr. Cornish, a surgeon 

 of Totness ; the rest is taken from Pennant and other authors, 

 and indirectly brings in some of White's information, which 

 had been communicated to Pennant's British Zoology. There 

 is also the well-known essay on the "Periodical Appearing 

 and Disappearing of Certain Birds at Different Times of 

 the Year," which is here reprinted, with additions, from 

 the Philosophical Transactions. He admits that periodical 

 migrations may take place from one part of a continent to 

 another, or even across a narrow strait, but it seems to him 

 highly improbable that birds should traverse seas and oceans. 

 He criticises the accounts of Adanson and Wager, and de- 

 fends the theory of winter- torpidity, though he owns that 

 he had never seen birds in the torpid state. He quotes from 

 White's Letter VIII. 1 the observations that woodcocks pair 

 before they retire, and that the hens are then forward with 

 egg ; also from Letter VII. the mention of the migration of 

 the ring-ousel. An essay on the torpidity of the swallow 

 tribe follows, in which White's Letter XXXVI. first appeared 

 in print. Another essay contains Barrington's sceptical 

 thoughts upon the common belief that the cuckoo neither 

 hatches nor rears its young, which he finds to take its rise in 

 a passage of Aristotle. It may be that some of the cases 

 quoted, in which the cuckoo is said to have hatched and fed 

 her own young, are well-founded. White's Letter XXIV. is 

 rather awkwardly introduced into this essay. Then we have 

 a weak and petulant criticism of the Linnaean system. Bar- 

 rington would have what White calls the " life and conversa- 

 tion " of animals more attended to. To give a better idea 

 of his meaning, he refers to White's letters on the British 

 swallows. White himself never disparaged system, though he 



1 The numbers refer to the letters to Barrington in the History of Selborne. 



