46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice 

 that were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, 

 how could the dam come at her litter respectively so as 

 to adminster a teat to each ? Perhaps she opens different 

 places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the 

 business is over : but she could not possibly be contained 

 herself in the ball with her young, which moreover would 

 be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant 

 cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was 

 found in a wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle. 1 



A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his 

 servant had shot one last January, in that severe weather, 

 which he believed would puzzle me. I called to see it this 

 summer, not knowing what to expect : but, the moment I 

 took it in hand, I pronounced it the male garrulus bohemicus 

 or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or 

 points which it carries at the ends of five of the short 

 remiges. 2 It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be 

 called an English bird : and yet I see, by Ray's " Philo- 

 sophical Letters," that great flocks of them, feeding on haws, 

 appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.' 



1 The Harvest Mouse (Mus minutus, Pall.) was first introduced to notice as 

 a British animal by Gilbert White, and appears in Pennant's ' British Zoology ' 

 on White's authority. Professor Bell points out, however, that it had been 

 previously known to Montagu, but had not been described by him in print. It is 

 fairly common in the southern and midland counties of England, reaching to 

 Southern Scotland, but it is not definitely determined as an Irish species (cf. 

 Lydekker, 'Handb. Brit. Mamm.' 1895, p. 182). [R. B. S.] 



* The Wax-wing (Ampelts garrulus). [R. B. S.] " 



8 Sir William Jardine in his edition of White's " Selborne," gives the following 

 note : "The letter alluded to was from Mr. Johnson to Mr. Ray, in 1686. ' On 

 the back-side you have the description of a new English bird. They came near 

 us in great flocks like fieldfares, and fed upon haws as they do.' And in another 

 letter from Mr. Thoresby to Mr. Ray, 1703, it is said, 'I am tempted to think 

 the German Silk-tail is become natural to us, there being no less than three killed 

 nigh this town the last winter." Thus has the Wax-wing occurred occasionally 

 in this county, but there is no record of any great numbers appearing together 

 since R.iy's time, until in 1849-50, when an unusual number visited us. The 

 direction of the flight was from east to west, and the principal localities where 

 they occurred, were the eastern or coast districts of Durham and Yorkshire in the 

 north, and of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent in the south. Their occurrence 

 reached over a period from November 1849 to March 1850, January being the 

 principal month of their appearance ; no fewer than 429 are recorded to have 



