TWO LETTERS WRITTEN BY MR. ADDISON. 377 



pervades them, and having been assured that they have never 

 yet met the public eye in print, I am inclined to think the 

 subject of them is not absolutely unfit for the pages of a 

 Magazine, so prominently identified with nature as the Ento- 

 mological Magazine. 



If you shall consider them worth insertion, they are at your 

 service ; but if not, please send me back the transcript, as it 

 may save my copying them, perhaps, at a future time. 



Believe me, yours, &c. 



Arthur Davis. 



Deptford, 22 d July, 1834. 



My dear Lord, — I have employed the whole neighbour- 

 hood in looking after birds' nests, and not altogether without 

 success. My man found one last night, but it proved a hen's, 

 with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody duck, which 

 may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little, though I am 

 afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I 

 have news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little 

 eggs, streaked with red and blue veins, that, by the description 

 they give me, must make a very beautiful figure on a string. 

 My neighbours are very much divided in their opinions upon 

 them ; some say they are a sky-lark's, — others will have them 

 to be a canary bird's ; but I am much mistaken in the colour 

 and turn of the eggs if they are not full of tom-tits. If your 

 Lordship does not make haste, I am afraid they will be birds 

 before you see them ; for, if the account they give of them be 

 true, they can't have above two days more to reckon. 



Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks, after having 

 passed the day among more severe studies, you may often take 

 a trip hither, and relax yourself with these little curiosities of 

 nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends 

 the two great friends of his age, Scipio and Laelius, for enter- 

 taining themselves at their country-house, which stood on the 

 sea-shore, with picking up cockle-shells, and looking after 

 birds' nests. For which reason I shall conclude this learned 

 letter with a saying of the same author, in his treatise of 

 Friendship : " Absint autem tristitia, et in omni re severitas : 

 habent ilia quidem gravitatem ; sed amicitia debet esse lenior 



vol. h. no. iv. 3 c 



