132 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PAST YEAR. 
Any deviation from the instinetive habits of birds, will, 
perbaps, be allowed to be deserving of record. Everyone, 
we may suppose, knows that the swallow almost always 
builds its nest in unused chimneys, and hence is commonly 
called the chimney swallow. Last spring, a pair of these 
birds chose for their habitation a magnolia tree, growing 
near a house at Corfe; such deviations as these, however, 
are not so uncommon as we should most of us in our ig- 
norance suppose. Yarrell has recorded, that in the north 
of England, these birds frequently build in the unused 
shafts of mines, or in old walls, sometimes under the roof 
ofa barn or open shed, between the rafters and the thatch 
or tiles. Turrets intended for bells are often resorted to, 
and unused rooms, or passages in out-houses, to which 
access can be gained by the round hole to be observed cut 
in the doors to such buildings, and within which the 
birds take advantage of any projecting peg, or end of a 
beam, that will serve as a buttress to support the rest. “I 
have heard,” he says, “of a nest made by a pair of 
swallows in the half open drawer of a small deal table, in 
an unoccupied garret, to which access was obtained by a 
broken pane of glass.” Pennant mentions an instance in 
which a pair of swallows attached their nest to the body 
and wing of an owl, nailed against a barn. Mr. Yarrell, 
however, concludes with saying that another most unusual 
selection of a situation for a swallow’s nest is the branches 
of a tree, which he moreover thinks deserving of a spirited 
vignette, and which justifies me in bringing our similar 
example before your notice. 
In zoology, Tam enabled to add another habitat for the 
Lisso-triton palmipes, or palmated smooth newt, which was 
found by my son in the pond at Stoke Court. There were 
only three species of newt or water eft known in Britain 
