life, for a beautiful youth shall be so like a beautiful 

 girl that the difference shall not be discernible :— 



** Quern si puellarum insereres choro, 

 Mire sagaces falleret hospites 

 Diserimen obscurum, solutis 

 Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu." 



HOR. (ii. V. 21-24.) 

 A fellow who, if you put him among a parcel of girls, the difficulty 

 of distinguishing him from them would puzzle a very quick-sighted host, 

 thanks to his long hairs and smooth ambiguous face." 



Selborne, May 21, 1770. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

 To Thomas Pennant, Esq. 



The French, I think, in general are strangely 

 prolix in their natural history. What Linnseus says 

 with respect to insects holds good in every other 

 branch : " Verbositas prsesentis sseculi, calamitas 

 artis." The verbosity of the present generation is 

 the calamity of art.' 



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 it 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. 



138 



