86 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XXX 



Selborne, Aug. 1, 1770. 

 Dear Sir, 



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

 in their natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect 

 to insects holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas 

 przsentis sasculi, 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 in the water as it was 

 on that errand in the river St. Lawrence : it was a 

 monstrous beast, he told me ; but he did not take the 

 dimensions. 



When I was last in town our friend Mr. Harrington 

 most obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. 

 As you were then writing to him about horns, he cacried 

 me to see many strange and wonderful specimens. There 

 is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, an horn 

 room furnished with more than thirty different pairs ; but 

 I have not seen that house lately. 



Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collec- 

 tions of stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the 

 world. After I had studied over the latter for a time, 

 I remarked that every species almost that came from 

 distant regions, such as South America, the coast of 

 Guinea, etc., were thick-billed birds of the loxia and 

 fringilla genera ; and no motacills, or musicapas, were to 

 be met with. When I came to consider, the reason was 

 obvious enough ; for the hard-billed birds subsist on 



