194 AGRICULTURE. BOOK T. 



3dly, The natural Properties of Animals. — Necessity, experi- 

 ence, and perhaps ambition, have contributed to make us ac- 

 quainted with most of the animal race. Many of these, besides 

 being highly useful in husbandry, often evince an instinct which 

 may be of considerable use in picturesque improvement. Thus 

 in pasture abounding with centaurea cynapium, which cows and 

 sheep refuse, the horse eats it greedily. In those where the 

 common groundsel, or the perennial ragweed abounds, horses 

 and cows refuse it, but sheep devour it readily. The sonchus 

 oleracius and dandelion are passed untouched by all these; but 

 swine eat them voraciously. When grass has been watered 

 withsalt, it will be greedily consumed by all graminivorous ani- 

 mals. Linnets make their nests chiefly in furze, and much 

 more readily in the Ulex europea, or Scotch furze, than in the 

 dwarf English whin. Their food is chiefly the seeds of the 

 plant ago, or those of the annual polygonums ; which last plant 

 affords food to most kinds of singing-birds. The thrush lives 

 chiefly on the berries of the mountain ash; the goldfinch on 

 those of the thistle, &c. There is such an infinite number of 

 useful facts to be gathered from this branch of natural history, 

 that it were endless to retail them *. 



4thly, Their Uses, or Subserviency to Mankind. — This know- 

 ledge is derived from experience in the first classes, and in the 



* See Linnaeus, Buffon, Edwards, Pennant, Goldsmith, Berkenhout, &c. 



