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NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Quadrupeds that prey on fish are amphibious : such is the 
otter, which by nature is so well 
formed for diving, that it makes 
great havoc among the inhabitants 
of the waters. Not supposing that 
we had any of those beasts in our 
shallow brooks, I was much pleased 
to see a male otter brought to me, 
weighing twenty-one pounds, that 
had been shot on the bank of our stream below the Priory, where 
the rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from Harteley-wood. 
LETTER XXX. To T. PENNANT, Esa. 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, August 1, 1770. 
The French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their 
natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect to insects 
holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas prcesentis sceculi, 
calamitas artis" 
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 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. 
Lawrence : it was a monstrous beast, he told me ; but he did not 
take the dimensions. 
When I was last in town our friend Mr. Barrington most 
obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. As you were 
then writing to him about horns, he carried me to see many 
strange and wonderful specimens. There is, I remember, at 
Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, a horn room furnished with more 
than thirty different pairs ; but I have not seen that house 
lately. 
Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of 
stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the world. After I 
had studied over the latter for a time, I remarked that every 
species almost that came from distant regions, such as South 
America, the coast of Guinea, &c. were thick-billed birds of the 
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