OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS. 
285 
GROSBEAK. 
Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak which he had observed to haunt his 
garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of 
making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries^, gooseberries, and 
wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop or 
craw, no buds were to be seen ; but a mass of kernels of the stones of 
fruits. Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where plum- 
trees grow, and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, 
which it broke with difficulty ; these were the stones of damsons. The 
latin ornithologists call this bird Coccothraustes, i.e., berry -breaker, 
because with its large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of 
stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are 
rarely seen in England, and only in winter. — White. 
I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the 
hardest winters; at which season of the year I have had in my 
possession two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in 
different years. — Markwick. 
OBSEEVATIONS ON QUADEUPEDS. 
SHEEP. 
The sheep on the downs this winter (17 69) are very ragged, and 
their coats much torn ; the shepherds say they tear their fleeces with 
their own mouths and horns, and they are always in that way in mild 
wet winters, being teased and tickled with a kind of lice. 
After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and 
bleating, neither the dams or the young being able to distinguish one 
another as before. This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from 
the loss of the fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their 
appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each 
individual personally ; which also is confounded by the strong scent of 
pitch and tar wherewith they are newly marked ; for the brute creation 
recognise each other more from the smell than the sight ; and in 
matters of identity and diversity, appeal much more to their noses than 
their eyes. After sheep have been washed there is the same confusion, 
from the reason given above. — White. 
RABBITS. 
Eabbits make incomparably the finest turf, for they not only bite 
closer than larger quadrupeds, but they allow no bents to rise ; hence 
