NATURAL HISTOltY OF SELBO11NE. 



37 



A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite 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 sur- 

 prised to find that 

 their bills, legs, feet, 

 and claws were milk- 

 white.* WEASEL. 



A shepherd saw, as 



he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter : 

 were not these the Emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. ZooU 

 JSo doubt they were. 



A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been 

 caught in the fields after it was come to its full 

 colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; 

 and, blackening every succeeding year, it became 

 coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was 

 hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of 

 animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domes- 

 ticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, 

 various, and unusual food. 



I had remarked, for years, that the root of the 

 cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of 

 the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy 

 weather. After observing, with some -exactness, 

 myself, and getting others to do the same, we found 

 it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The 

 root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent, f 



the form being a little more lengthened. These do not agree with the weasels 

 and stoats taken in traps, &c., and hence the delusion is kept up. 



Mitford has the following note in his edition. ' ' This I believe to be a pretty 

 general error among the county-people, also in other counties. This imaginary 

 animal in Suffolk is called the mouse hunt, ' from its being supposed to live on 

 mice. To discover the truth of this report, I managed to have several of these 

 animals brought to me ; all of which I find to be the common weasel. The 

 error I conceive partly to have arisen from this animal, like most others, 

 appearing less than its real size, when running or attempting to escape, a 

 circumstance well known to the hunters of India, with respect to larger animals, 

 as the tiger, " &c. 



* We possess a large rookery, and although we have never had an entire white 

 or cream coloured variety, scarcely a year passes without some young being 

 observed with more or less white in the plumage, and in these the bill and feet, 

 as well as the claws, are also white. 



t We have not observed the roots of the arum scratched for as mentioned. 



