etimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a
litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades of grass or wheat.

One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and
composed of the blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the size of a
cricket ball, with the aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was no
discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled,
that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it
contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As this nest was
perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as
to administer a teat to each? Perhaps she opens different places for
that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over; but she
could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which
moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant
cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a
wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle.

A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had shot
one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would puzzle
me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to expect, but the
moment I took it in hand I pronounced it the male _garrulus bohemicus_ or
German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or points which it
carries at the ends of five of the short remiges. It cannot, I suppose,
with any propriety, be called an English bird, and yet I see, by Ray's
"Philosophical Letters," that great flocks of them, feeding on haws,
appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.

The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total failure of that
wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged nation.
For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off all the
produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the
more hardy and common.

Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding on the berries
of the yew tree, which answered to the description of the _merula
torquata_, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood. I
employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success. (See
Letter VIII.)

_Query_.--Might not canary birds be naturalised to this climate, provided
their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of their
congeners, as goldfinches, greenfin