OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS. 235 



GROSBEAK. 



Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak which he had observed to haunt his 

 garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of 

 making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries, gooseberries, and 

 wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop or 

 craw, no buds were to be seen ; but a mass of kernels of the stones of 

 fruits. Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where plum- 

 trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, 

 which it broke with difficulty ; these were the stones of damsons. The 

 latin ornithologists call this bird Coccotliraustes, i.e., berry -breaker, 

 because with its large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of 

 stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are 

 rarely seen in England, and only in winter. WHITE. 



I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the 

 hardest winters ; at which season of the year I have had in my 

 possession two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in 

 different years. MAKKWICK. 



I 



OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS. 



SHEEP. 



THE sheep on the downs this winter (1769) are very ragged, and 

 their coats much torn ; the shepherds say they tear their fleeces with 

 their own mouths and horns, and they are always in that way in mild 

 wet winters, being teased and tickled with a kind of lice. 



After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and 

 bleating, neither the dams or the young being able to distinguish one 

 another as before. This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from 

 the loss of the fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their 

 appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each 

 individual personally ; which also is confounded by the strong scent of 

 pitch and tar wherewith they are newly marked ; for the brute creation 

 recognise each other more from the smell than the sight ; and in 

 matters of identity and diversity, appeal much more to their noses than 

 their eyes. After sheep have been washed there is the same confusion, 

 from the reason given above. WHITE. 



RABBITS. 



Rabbits make incomparably the finest turf, for they not only bite 

 closer than larger quadrupeds, but they allow no bents to rise ; hence 



