40 The Natural History 



Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems 

 to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : 



"TiTpd^u/Lioi pivis, niavpes Trvoipcrt biavKoi." 

 "Quadrifidce nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." 



Opp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. i8i. 



Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say 

 that goats breathe at their ears ; whereas he asserts just 

 the contrary : — " AXK/xaMv yap ovk ak-qOrj Xeyei, <^a/xevos 

 avairveiv tol^ alyas Kara. to. (Lra." " Alcmaeon does not 

 advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe 

 through their ears." — History of Afn??ials. Book I. chap, 

 xi. 



LETTER XV 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



Selborne, March 30, 1768. 



Dear Sir, 



Some intelligent country people have a notion that we 

 have, in these parts, a species of the ge?ius viustelimuii^ 

 besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little 

 reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but 

 much longer, which they call a ca?ie. This piece of 

 intelligence can be little depended on; but farther 

 inquiry may be made. 



A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk- 

 white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding 

 them before they were able to fly, threw them down and 

 destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who would 

 have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his 

 rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end 

 of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, 

 feet, and claws were milkwhite. 



A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a 

 down above my house this winter : were not these the 

 e?nberiza fiivaiis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool. ? No 

 doubt they were. 



