LETTER XII 



TO THE SAME 



November qth t 1767. 



SIR, It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the 

 falco^ turned out an uncommon one. I must confess I 

 should have been better pleased to have heard that I had 

 sent you a bird that you had never seen before ; but that, 

 I find, would be a difficult task. 



I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my 

 former letters, a young one and a female with young, both 

 of which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, 

 shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but 

 that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, 

 and more slender, than the mus domesticus medius of Ray ; 

 and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour : their 

 belly is white ; a straight line along their sides divides the 

 shades of their back and belly. They never enter into 

 houses ; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves ; 

 abound in harvest ; and build their nests amidst the straws 

 of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. 

 They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round 

 nest composed of the blades of grass or wheat. 



One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artifi- 

 cially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat ; per- 

 fectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball; with 

 the aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was no 

 discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact 

 and well filled, that it would roll across the table without 



1 This letter is dated from "Selborne, near Alton, Hants, Nonf 6, 1767." 

 [R. B. S.] 



2 This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus ; a variety. [G. W.] 



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