32 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two inches and 

 a quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in 

 a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about 

 the third of an ounce avoirdupois : so that I suppose they are the 

 smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full-grown mus medius 

 domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce lumping weight, which is 

 more than six times as much as the mouse above ; and measures 

 from nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same in it's 

 tail. 1 We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. 

 My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and an half 

 below the freezing-point, within doors. The tender evergreens 

 were injured pretty much. It was very providential that the air 

 was still, and the ground well covered with snow, else vegetation 

 in general must have suffered prodigiously. There is reason to 

 believe that some days were more severe than any since the year 

 1739-40. 



I am, &c., &c. 



LETTER XIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, March 12, 1768. 

 DEAR SIR, 



IF some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow- 

 deer, and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two 

 spiracula, or breathing-places, besides the nostrils ; probably ana- 

 logous to ihepuncta lachrymalia in the human head. 2 When deer 



1 [See preceding letter. " It is perhaps not generally known that the tail of the 

 harvest mouse is prehensile, and is in consequence of great service to the little 

 animal when descending the wheat stalks, amongst which its nest is usually sus- 

 pended. In The Zoologist for 1843, p. 289, will be found a woodcut in illustration 

 of this fact as observed by the Rev. Pemberton Bartlett." Harting.~\ 



2 [Hunter and Owen have shown by dissection that these cavities are closed 

 internally, and do not communicate with the air passages. E. T. Bennett, in his 

 edition of White's Selborne, notes that the Indian antelopes kept in the Zoological 

 Society's gardens were fond of everting the sacs, and rubbing them against an 

 observer's hand. ' ' After the finger has been subjected for some time to this 

 rubbing, it will be found to have acquired a heavy odour, of a salt and peculiar 

 character" (Bennett}. Other observers describe the odour as musky. Objects 

 rubbed with the waxy secretion of the glands attract the attention of the antelopes, 

 which sniff at and lick them. The glands are usually larger in the male than in 

 the female. They occur, not only in many deer, but also in most species of sheep 

 and goat. The most probable explanation of their function is that the secretion is 

 alluring to the females.] 



