66 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
it is a distinct species; for the quadrupeds of Britain are so 
few, that every new species is a great acquisition. 
The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so 
majestic a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I 
never was informed before where wild-geese are known to 
breed. 
You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria to 
be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray; and I think you may be 
secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains to clear 
up that matter, and had some fair specimens ; but, as they were 
not well preserved, they are decayed already. You will, no 
doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next edition. Your 
additional plates will much improve your work. 
De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse: but 
still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, 
for the reason I have given in the article of the white hare. 
As a neighbor was lately ploughing a dry, chalky field far 
removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was 
curiously laid up in a hybernaculum’? artificially formed of grass 
and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of 
potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported 
itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me is how this 
water-rat came to fix its winter station at such a distance from 
the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place by the 
mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there: 
or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the 
neighborhood of the water in the colder months ? 
Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing 
how fallacious it is with respect to natural history; yet, in the 
following instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may 
conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have men- 
tioned before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the 
swift, so many weeks before its congeners ; and that not only 
1 Hybernaculum — winter nest. 
