motions of these birds; and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, as you obseve, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you.*

*

And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it, an anecdote which the above mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at his house; which was, that in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws (corvi monedule) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and if they heard the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz. the puffins) breed, I know, in this manner; but I should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground.

Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd boys, who are always idling round that place.

One of my neighbours last Saturday (November the 26th)‡

This species is extremely local, being scarcely found out of Hampshire, Norfolk, and one or two of the eastern counties of England.-W. J.

Mr. Herbert says that "he has only found it on chalk. It never strayed on the sand or gravel, and consequently was not on the heaths, but in the chalky turnip fields." This species is, no doubt, extremely local and only finds the food it requires, chiefly small green beetles, on chalk soils.-ED.

Daws build in a great variety of odd places, and use curious materials for their nests. Clothes-pegs and lucifer match-boxes have been found in them. They have been known to carry away the wooden labels from a botanic garden. In one instance, no less than eighteen dozen of these labels are said to be found in one chimney where the daws built. In my "Scenes and Tales of Country Life," I have given an engraving of a daw's nest built in the bell tower of Eton chapel, perhaps one of the most curious structures on record.-ED.

Mr. Yarrell informs me that a series of interesting experiments might be made with the view to ascertain by artificial means how low a degree of temperature swallows could sustain for a time without destroying life.-ED.

saw a martin in a sheltered bottom; the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter.

You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution concerning the cures done by toads; for, let people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion.

Your approbation with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction; and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short stay they make with us, for in about three weeks they are all gone. I shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in the spring, as they did last year.

I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had settled me near the sea-side, or near some great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted with their productions; but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce.

LETTER XXII.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Jan. 2, 1769.

DEAR SIR,-As to the peculiarity of jack-daws building with us under ground, in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country. And perhaps, Nor

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folk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom.* We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a-year, whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dovecots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, and the Fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves in every point of view. As an admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own country, for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape.

What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked, that "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind."+

It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devonshire, because it corroborates my discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sand-bank near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well acquainted with the south hams of Devonshire, and can suppose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours.

Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable; and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay.

In your account of your error with regard to the two

*Necessity often obliges birds to build in odd places. A pair of magpies in a district where there were no trees, made their nest in a gooseberry-bush in a cotter's garden, and surrounded it with brambles, furze, &c. in so ingenious a manner that no one would get at the eggs without pulling the materials to pieces. I have seen a colony of rooks build on the top of some young ash trees growing close to a farmhouse door, the trees being very spindly, and not mere than ten or twelve feet high. There were no large trees in the neighbourhood. And I may mention that I saw at Pipe Hall, in Warwickshire, a swallow's nest built on the knocker of a door.-Ed.

St. James, chap. iii. 7.