Letter XV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Mark 30, 1768.

Dear Sir,

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 neighbourhood had two milk-white 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 Brat. Zool.? No doubt they were.

A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been
caught in the fields after it had come to its full colours. In about a