42 
NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTER XV. 
TO THE SAME. 
DEAR SIR, Seleorne, March 30, 176S0 
Some intelligent country people have a notion that we have, in. 
thefe parts, a fpecies o( the genus muJleUnum, befides the weafel, ftoat, 
ferret, and polecat ; a little reddifh beaft, not much bigger than a 
field moufe, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece 
of intelligence can be little depended on ; but farther inquiry 
may be made. 
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite rooks in 
one neft. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able 
to fly, threw them down and deftroyed them, to the regret of the 
owner, who would have been glad to have preferved fuch a curi- 
ofity in his rookery. I favv the birds myfelf nailed againft the end 
of a barn, and was furprifed to find that their bills, legs, feet, 
and claws were milkwhite. 
A fhepherd faw, as he thought, fome white larks on a down 
above my houfe this winter : were not thefe the emberlza nivalis^ 
the fnow-flake of the Brit. Zool. P No doubt they were. 
A few years ago I favv^ a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had 
been caught in the fields after it was come to it's full colours. 
In about a year it began to look dingy ; and, blackening every 
fucceeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. It's 
chief food was hempfeed. Such influence has food on the colour 
of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domefl:icated ani- 
mals are fuppofcd to be owing to high, variouSj and unufual food. 
I had 
