THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ° 79 
useful and important work. What knowledge there is of this 
sort lies scattered, and wants to be collected ; great improve- 
ments would soon follow of course. A knowledge of the pro- 
perties, economy, propagation, and in short of the life and 
conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to 
some method of preventing their depredations. 
As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend ento- 
mology more than some neat plates that should well express 
the generic distinctions of insects according to Linnzus; for I 
am well assured that many people would study insects, could 
they set out with a more adequate notion of those distinctions 
than can be conveyed at first by words alone. 
LETTER XXXV. 
SELBORNE, /777. 
Happening to make a visit to my neighbor’s peacocks, I 
could not help observing that the trains of those magnificent 
birds appear by no means to be their tails; those long feathers 
growing not from their rump, but all up their backs. A range 
of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in 
the rump, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop 
the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. 
When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but 
its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those 
long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the 
turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong mus- 
cular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long 
feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer ; they then 
trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards 
the females. 
I should tell you that I have got an uncommon Calculus 
egogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly 
