NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 73 



majestic a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I 

 never was informed before where wild-geese are known to 

 breed. 



You admit, I find, that I have proved your ieii-salicaria 

 to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray ; and I think you may 

 be secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains 

 to clear up that matter, and had some fair specimens ; but, 

 as they were not well preserved, they are decayed already. 

 You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next 

 edition. Your additional plates will much improve your 

 work. 



De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse : 

 but still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in 

 Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article of 

 the white hare. 



As a neighbour was lately ploughing a dry, chalky field, 

 far removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that 

 was curiously lain up in a hybernaculum artificially formed 

 of grass and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above 

 a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to 

 have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty 

 with me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter 

 station at such a distance from the water. Was it 

 determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident 

 of finding the potatoes which were planted there ? or is it 

 the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the 

 neighbourhood of the water in the colder months ? 



Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, 

 knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history ; 

 yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined 

 to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a 

 difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the 

 invariable early retreat of the Hirundo apus, or swift, so 



