38 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



as were hard worked : for they, being naturally strait or 

 small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they 

 travelled or laboured in that hot climate. And we know 

 that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils 

 necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses. 

 Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to 

 have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : 



" TcT/adSn/iot pives, irurvpti jrvoiycri SiavXoi." 



" Quadrifidae nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." 



Opp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. i8l. 



Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say 

 that goats breathe at their ears ; whereas he asserts just the 

 contrary : — " AX/c/xaiwi' yap ovk a\>]d^ Xeyei, <pdfji.€voi avairvelv 

 Toi alyai kutu to &ra." " Alcmaeon does not advance 

 what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through 

 their ears." — History of Animals. Book L chap. xi. 



LETTER XV 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



Selborne, March 30, 1768. 

 Dear Sir, 



Some intelligent country people have a notion that we have, 

 in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the 

 weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little reddish beast, not 

 much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which 

 they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little 

 depended on ; but farther inquiry may be made. 



A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite 

 rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them 

 before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed 

 them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been 

 glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I 

 saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and 



