stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase, by affording them free respiration; and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that at Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked; for they, being naturally straight or small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they traveled or labored in that hot climate. And we know that grooms and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses. Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula: “ Τετράδυμοι ρινες, πιδυρες πνοιησι διαυλοι. Quadrifida nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." OPP. CYN. Lib. ii. 1, 181. Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say, that goats breathe at their ears, whereas he asserts just the contrary::66 Αλκμαιων γαρ ουκ αληθη, λεγει, φαμένος αναπνειν τας αιγας κατα τα ώτα.~Alcmæon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears."-History of Animals. Book i. chap. xi. * In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious and pertinent reply:-"I was much surprised to find in the antelope something analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This animal also has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them." XV. SOME intelligent country people have a notion that we have, in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, 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 neighborhood had two milkwhite rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down, and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws, were milk-white.* A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter; were not these the emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool.? No doubt they were. saw a A few years ago, I cock bulfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colors. In about a year, it began to look dingy, and, blackening every succeeding year, it *The common rook, corvus frugilegus, seems to be more subject to a white variation than its other British congeners. Specimens entirely white are not often seen, but individuals with parts of the wings and tail pure white, occur in almost every rookery. A pair of magpies, entirely of a cream color, were hatched at a farm-steading in Eskdale, Dumfries-shire, and, being much thought of by the tenant, were strictly preserved, and continued near the spot for many years.-W. J. became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hemp-seed. Such influence has food on the color of animals! The pied and mottled colors of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food. I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent. Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in January. In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity; it was of that yellow-green color that belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no parus, and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird; it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamoring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, "circa aquas versantes ;" for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep-walks, far removed from water; what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs. I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnæus perhaps would call the species mus minimus. XVI. THE history of the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, is as follows:-It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field, so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c. and are withdrawn to some flinty field by thedam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the color of our grey spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round, of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamor which may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields. I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens ;* two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note, the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drachms and a half, while the latter weighs but two; so that the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted,) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-colored; of the less, black. The grasshopper lark began his sibilous note in my fields last Saturday.† Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by, though at an hundred yards' distance; and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is the most artful creature, skulking in the thickest * Sylvia trochilus, S. sibilatrix and S. hippolais, are the species found in Great Britain. Mr. White afterwards discovers three distinct species, but may probably confound S. hortensis, the greater petty-chaps, as one of them.— W. J. ylvia locustella. Lath. Grasshopper warbler. SELBY'S Ornith.-W. J. |