OF SELBOBNE, 
43 
aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was no discover- 
ing to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well 
filled, that it would roll across the table without being dis- 
composed, though it contained eight little mice that were 
naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full_, how could 
the dam come at her litter respectively so as to administer 
a teat to each ? Perhaps she opens different places for that 
purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over ] 
but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball 
with the young, which moreover would be daily increasing 
in bulk. This wonderful '''procreant cradle,'^ an elegant 
instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat -field 
suspended in the head of a thistle.^ 
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his 
servant had shot one last January, in that severe weather, 
which, he believed, would puzzle me. I called to see it this 
summer, not knowing what to expect; but the moment I 
took it in hand, I pronounced it the male Garrulus Bohe- 
micuSy or German silk- tail, from the five peculiar crimson 
tags or points which it carries at the ends of five of the 
short remiges. It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, 
be called an English bird ; and yet I see, by Ray's Philoso- 
phical Letters, that great flocks of them, feeding on haws, 
appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.^ 
The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total 
failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of 
many of the winged nation. For the same severe weather, 
late in the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more 
tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more 
hardy and common. 
^ We are indebted to Gilbert White for the first published account of 
this beautiful little animal as indigenous to this country, although it 
appears to have been previously seen by Montagu in Wiltshire (cf 
Trans. Lin. Soc. vol. vii. p. 274). White communicated his discovery 
to Pennant, who published it in the second edition of his "British 
Quadrupeds ; " and thence it has been copied, with but little addition, 
by almost every writer on the subject of British mammalia, — Ed. 
2 The waxwing, or Bohemian chatterer, as it is often called (Ampelis 
garrulus, Linnaeus), may be regarded as an irregular winter visitant to 
this country, occasionally appearing in large flocks. — Ed. 
