then here is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the southern counties. The ousel is larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yewberries: in the spring it feeds on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April.

I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then, of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 63 feet deep, a large black warty lizard, with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How they first came down at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am able to say.

My thanks are due to you for your trouble and

care in the examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions; and I hope find reason to give his decision in and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation.

Mr

my

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favour;

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yet I am not quite done with my history of the oedicnemus, or stone curlew; for I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex (near whose house these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn) to observe nicely when they leave him, (if they do leave him) and when they return again in the spring: I was with this gentleman lately, and saw several single birds.

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XXI.

WITH regard to the oedicnemus, or stone cur lew, I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound; and shall urge him to take particular notice when they begin to congregate, and afterward to watch them most narrowly whe ther they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of the winter. When I have obtained informa tion with respect to this circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the stone curlew, which I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these birds; and besides, as have pre vailed 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 observe, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you.*

And here will be the properest place to men tion, 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 monedula) build every year in the rabbit burrows underground. The way he and his brothers used to

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

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, 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 any thing from common report, especially in print, without expressing degree of doubt and suspicion.

some

Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ringousel, 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 enquiry whether your ringousels 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.

As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the 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, Norfolk 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 ayear 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.

P

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 sandbank 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 ringousels 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 enquire why they make so very short a stay.

In your account of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressi-hall, which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi-hall is,

James, chap. iii. 7.

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