80 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to gratify : 

 for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed towards 

 water ; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign to wet a 

 foot, much less to plunge into that element. 



Quadrupeds that prey on fish are amphibious: such is 

 the otter, which by nature is so well formed for diving, that 

 it makes great havoc among the inhabitants of the waters. 

 Not supposing that we had any of those beasts in our 

 shallow brooks, I was much pleased to see a male otter, 

 brought to me, weighing twenty-one pounds, that had been 

 shot on the bank of our stream below the Priory, where the 

 rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from Harteley-wood. 



LETTER XXX. 



SELBORNE, Aug. 1st, 1770. 



THE French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in 

 their natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect to 

 insects holds good in every other branch " Verbositas 

 prcesentis sceculi, calamitas artis" 



Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work 1 As I 

 admire his Entomologia, I long to see it. 



I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not room 

 to insert in the former) that the male moose, in rutting 

 time, swims from island to island, in the lakes and rivers of 

 North America, in pursuit of the females. My friend, the 

 chaplain, saw one killed in the water as it was on that 

 errand in the river St. Lawrence : it was a monstrous 

 beast, he told me ; but he did not take the dimensions. 



When I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington most 



