68 THE NATUEAL HISTORY 



often told me that soon after harvest he has frequently taken 

 small coveys of partridges, consisting of cock-birds alone ; these 

 he pleasantly used to call old bachelors. 



There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is 

 very remarkable ; I mean their violent fondness for fish, which 

 appears to be their most favourite food : and yet nature in this 

 instance seems to have planted in them an appetite that, un- 

 assisted, 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 havock 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 

 Selbome from Harteley-wood. 



LETTER XXX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selbome, Aug. i, 1770. 

 Dear Sir, 



The French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their 

 natural history. 1 What Linrueus says with respect to insects 

 holds good in every other branch : " Ferbosiias prcesenlis soBculi, 

 " calamitas artis ". 



Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work .' 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 



1 [In a letter to his brother John, Jan. 25, 1771, Gilbert White says : "Geoffroy 

 no doubt is too verbose ; so are all his countrymen ". Besides Geoffroy he may have 

 had Reaumur and Buffon in his mind. White's acquaintance with them was 

 probably slight, aiTd the remark seems a little harsh to those who have read these 

 naturalists, and especially Reaumur, with never-ending pleasure and profit.] 



