42 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many 

 from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. 

 As to wild fowls, we have a few teems of ducks bred in 

 the moors where the snipes breed ; and multitudes of 

 widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in 

 the forest. 



Having some acquaintance with a tame brown ozo/, 1 1 

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

 birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks : 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, magpies, 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 black-caps 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 

 parapet, so late as the 2oth of November. 



At present I know only two species of bats, the common 

 vespertilio murinus 2 and the vespertilio auribus. 3 



1 Syrnium aluco (the Tawny or Wood-owl). [R. B. S.] 



4 The Pipistrelle is here intended. [R. B. S.] 



3 Professor Bell's note on the Bats of Selborne is very interesting. He 

 writes : "The Bats which I have found at Selborne are the Noctule (Scotophilus 

 noctula), the Pipistrelle (Sc.pipistrellus), the Reddish-grey Bat ( Vespertilio nattereri), 

 Daubenton's Bat (V. daubentonii}, and the Long-eared Bat (Plecotus auritus). Of 

 the first of these White was undoubtedly the first observer in this country ; and 

 he was not sufficiently acquainted with the zoological literature of the Continent 

 to be aware that as early as 1759 Daubenton had described it in the Memoirs of 

 the Academy, with a figure of its head, and that Buffon had subsequently, but 

 before White's discovery, given it a place in his great work, with a plate (vol. 

 iii. p. 128, pi. 18, f. i). White's name, altivolans, is very appropriate. I have 

 seen it at Selborne for several successive years, passing up and down the whole 

 length of the valley between the Lythe and Dorton wood, flying as high as the 



