40 NATURAL HISTORY 



from a great river, and therefore see but little of seabirds. 

 As to wild fowls, we have a few teams of ducks bred in the 

 moors where the snipes breed ; and multitudes of widgeons 

 and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in the forest. 



Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find 

 that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds, in 

 pellets, after the manner of hawks : when full, like a dog, it 

 hides what it cannot eat. 



The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they 

 want a constant supply of fresh mice : whereas the young of 

 the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought ; 

 snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies and any kind of 

 carrion or offal. 



The house-martins have eggs still, and squab-young. 

 The last swift I observed was about the twenty-first of 

 August ; it was a straggler. 



Red- starts, fly-catchers, white-throats and Reguli non 

 cristati, still appear ; x but I have seen no blackcaps lately. 



I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church 

 College quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm 

 morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the 

 parapets, so late as the twentieth of November. 



At present I know only two species of bats, the common 

 Vespertilio murinus 1 and the Vespertilio auritus. 2 



I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, 

 which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave 

 it any thing to eat, it brought its wings round before the 

 mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds 



1 By Reguli non cristati are intended the three species of " willow- 

 wrens," as they are generally called, and to which allusion has been 

 already made. ED. 



2 The common pipistrelle and the long- eared bat. In giving to the 

 former, however, the specific name murinus White fell into a mistake 

 which many others have since made. V. murinus being the common 

 bat of the Continent, it was assumed that the common bat of this country 

 must be the same species, and Pennant having once stated such to be 

 the case, every subsequent writer on bats copied the mistake. It was 

 left to the Rev. Leonard Jenyns to correct this long established error, 

 and he has done so most satisfactorily in a paper published in the 16th 

 vol. of the " Linnean Society's Transactions." ED. 



