OF SELBORNE. 75 
that I am right ; for I took very particular pains to clear up that 
matter, and had fome fair fpecimens ; but, as they were not well 
preferved, they are decayed already. You will, no doubt, infert 
it in it's proper place in your next edition. Your additional 
plates will much improve your work. 
De Buffon, I know, has defcribed the water fhrew-moufe : but 
ftill I am pleafed to find you have difcovered it in Lincoln f])}re, 
for the reafon I have given in the article of the white hare. 
As a neighbour was lately plowing in a dry chalky field, far 
removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was 
curioully laid up in an hyhernaciilim artificially formed of grafs and 
leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes 
regularly flowed, on which it was to have fupported itfelf for the 
winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphiVius mus 
came to fix it's winter flation at fuch a diftance from the water. 
Was it determined in it's choice of that place by the mere accident 
of finding the potatoes which were planted there ; or is it the 
conftant pradice of the aquatic-rat to forfake the neighbourhood 
of the water in the colder months ? 
Though I delight very little in analogous reafoning, knowing 
how fallacious it is with refpeit to natural hiflory ; yet, in the 
following inftance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may 
conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that 1 have men- 
tioned before, with refped to the invariable early retreat of the 
hirimdo apus, or fwift, fo many weeks before it's congenei-s ; and 
that not only with us, but alfo in Andalujia, where they alfo begin 
to retire about the beginning of Augujl. 
The great large bat' (which by the by is at prefent a non- 
i The little bat appears almoft; every month in the year ; but I have never feen tl^e. 
large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are moil common in June, but 
never in any plenty : are a rare fpecles with us. 
L 2. defcript 
