T will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to the falco; as to its weight, breadth,

&c. I wish I had set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of its eyelids a bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the pupils and the irides.*

The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of Hoopoes (upupa)+ which came several years ago in the summer, and frequented an

The irides are brown in all the British falcons.

†The Hoopoes are very shy birds. Montagu also knew of a pair in Hampshire, which abandoned their half-finished nest. They are never regular visitants with us, but turn up unexpectedly in almost every county of England and Scotland. They are named from their cry, which resembles Up! up! pu! repeated several times, but breathed out softly. The French name, La Huppe, has probably a double origin-in its cry and crest, both of which the term describes. -ED.

ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the walks, many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them be at rest.

Three grosbeaks (loxia coccothraustes) appeared some years ago in my fields, in the winter; one of which I shot; since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.

[Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak which he had observed to haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries, gooseberries, and wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop or craw, however, no buds were to be seen, but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. Mr. B. observed that this bird frequented the spot where plum-trees grow; and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty; these were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call this bird coccothraustes, i. e. berry-breaker, because with its large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, and only in winter.*]— OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE.

* Montagu speaks of the Grosbeak visiting England in the autumn. Mr. Doubleday has satisfied himself that it remains the whole year, and breeds in Epping Forest, and elsewhere round London: and Jesse says that, being rather a rare bird, it is shot whenever it is seen, for preservation. It breeds among the hornbeans of Epping Forest, and also in the grounds of Lord Clifden, at Roehampton; none of Mr. McGillivray's correspondents seem to have known the bird.-ED.

A cross-bill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neighbourhood.

Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's head,* or miller's thumb (gobius fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (lampætra parva et fluviatilis), and the stickleback (pisciculus aculeatus).

We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild fowls, we have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and multitudes of widgeons and teals frequent our lakes in the forest in hard weather.

Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.

The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant supply of fresh mice: whereas

*Salmo fario. Linn.

The tawny or hooting Owl (Ulula aluco), and half-a-dozen names besides, is perhaps the commonest species in the south of England. In a solitary wood, where it is not expected, the tremulous Hu-hoo er re hoo! of this bird of night, for it is strictly nocturnal, is startling enough. Many observers agree that it catches and eats fish as well as the barn owl. Mr. M'Gillivray found earth-worms in the stomach of one.-ED.

Strix flammea may be looked on as the typical nocturnal owl, whose shriek, if the belief in ghosts had not become extinct, might reasonably enough create feelings of supernatural dread. When taken young from the nest, they are not supposed to be difficult to rear. One or more broods are produced in the season, the bird hatching two eggs, and then laying two more, and again a third time; so that, according to Mr. Blyth, six young owls of different ages frequently occupy the same nest.-ED.

the young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.

The house-martins have eggs still, and squabyoung. The last swift I observed was about the twenty-first of August; it was a straggler.

Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and goldcrested wrens, reguli non cristati, still appear; but I have seen no blackcaps lately.

I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church college quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the twentieth of Nóvember.

At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio murinus, and the vespertilio auribus.*

I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered: so that the notion, that bats go down chimnies and gnaw men's bacon, seems no im

Bats are now known to be much more numerous, and probably many remain undiscovered from their timid nocturnal habits. Bell enumerates twelve species, after separating the vespertilio from the plecotus and barbastellas. Vespertilio auribus being a plecotus: Vespertilio murinus and Vespertilio noctula are described in Letter XLVI. as Vespertilio altivolans.-ED.

E

probable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.

Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but on account of the insects, which are found over them in the greatest plenty. As I was going, some years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, I think I saw myriads of bats between the two places the air swarmed with them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a time.