GILBEET white's BOOK 171 



move them horizontally, as dogs do when they 

 fawn ; the tail of a wagtail when in motion bobs up 

 and down like that of a jaded horse." "Most birds 

 drink sipping at intervals; but pigeons take a long- 

 continued draught, like quadrupeds." When he 

 saw the stilt- plover, he observed at once that it had 

 no back toe, and must therefore be a bad walker. 

 "Without that steady prop to support its steps, it 

 must be liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacilla- 

 tions, and seldom able to preserve the true centre 

 of gravity." There is a sly, humorous twinkle in 

 this passage that our author seldom indulges in. 



White's interest and curiosity in every phase of 

 natural history were so lively and his habit of mind 

 was so frank and open that much came in his way 

 to record that would otherwise have been passed 

 by. His neighbor had a hog which he kept to an 

 advanced age, and our curate writes to Mr. Barring- 

 ton one of his characteristic letters about it. " The 

 natural term of a hog's life," he begins, "is little 

 known, and the reason is plain, — because it is 

 neither profitable nor convenient to keep that tur- 

 bulent animal to the full extent of its time: how- 

 ever, my neighbor, a man of substance, who had 

 no occasion to study every little advantage to a 

 nicety, kept an half-bred Bantam sow, who was as 

 thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on 

 the ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth 

 year, at which period she showed some tokens of 

 age by the decay of her teeth and the decline of her 

 fertility." Two or three of his most charming let- 



