112 SINGING BIEDS. 



must a full-grown stag be ! I have been told some arrive at 

 ten feet and a half! This poor creature had at first a female 

 companion of the same species, which died the spring before. 

 In the same garden was a young stag, or red-deer, between 

 whom and this moose it was hoped that there might have 

 been a breed; but their inequality of height must have 

 always been a bar to any commerce of the amorous kind. I 

 should have been glad to have examined the teeth, tongue, 

 lips, hoofs, &c., minutely ; but the putrefaction precluded aU 

 farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed 

 to enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. 

 In the house, they showed me the horn of a male moose, 

 which had no front antlers, but only a broad palm, with 

 some snags on the edge. The noble owner of the dead 

 moose proposed to make a skeleton of her bones. 



Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds 

 with that you saw ; and whether you think stUl that the 

 American moose and European elk are the same creature. 



LETTER XXXIII. 



TO THE HON. DAINES EAEEINGTON. 



Selborne, April ]2, 1770. 

 Dbae Sie, — I heard many birds of several species sing 

 last year after midsummer ; enough to prove that the sum- 

 mer solstice is not the period that puts a stop tb the music 

 of the woods. The yellow-hammer, no doubt, persists with 

 more steadiness than any other ; but the wood-lark, the 

 wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the 

 goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted instances of 

 the truth of what I advanced. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of 

 the summer migrations, the black-cap will be here in two or 

 three days.* I wish it was in my power to procure you one 



* Through the attention of W. Carruthers, Esq., of Dortnont, I have 

 lately received the black-cap, with some others of our summer birds, from 

 Madeira, where it is probable they partly retire, on leaving their breeding 

 places. — W. J. 



