LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 103 



beauty, and old age itself, in ruins under the fatal pressure of this 

 degrading vice. The knave thrives on the follies of the drunkard, 

 and whole families may trace the commencement of their decay to 

 the dire allurements of the public-house. Father Matthew has done 

 more for Great Britain by his divine suit of Sobriety versus Sot, than 

 all her parliaments and potentates put together, from the days of old 

 Harry down to the present time. 



"And now a parting word on Natural History. An extensive 

 preserve for every kind of British bird which may choose to take 

 advantage of it, has afforded me excellent opportunities of making 

 ornithological notes with tolerable exactness, and the observations 

 of former years have occasionally been corrected by others in after- 

 times. Still I recommend that what I have given to the public on 

 the nature of our birds should be received with a certain degree of 

 reservation, as their habits are apt to vary in proportion as location 

 varies. Thus, the windhover, or kestril, at this place, abstains from 

 killing birds during its abode amongst us ; but, after it has left us on 

 the approach of autumn, it is known to feed upon them during the 

 winter months, as Mr Bury has satisfactorily proved. The sea-gulls, 

 which not unfrequently resort to this inland sheet of water, pass the 

 whole of their time in procuring fish ; but I have seen the same 

 species, on our eastern coast, following the farmer's plough, like 

 rooks, in quest of worms. Mr Wighton's squirrels will consume 

 carnal food when in confinement, whilst mine, in liberty, are never 

 known to touch it ; and, in Scotland, Sir William Jardine's barn-owl 

 is known to hoot ; but here, in Yorkshire, this species of owl can do- 

 no such thing. I myself can eat boiled snails in Southern Italy, but 

 I am not quite certain that I would dine on them at Walton Hall, 

 with a sirloin of roast beef on the table before me. At sea, too, I 

 have eagerly consumed decayed biscuit, the very sight of which 

 would be abhorrent to my eyes on the shelves of a baker's shop. In a 

 word, who knows but that the Hanoverian rat, which is so voracious 

 in this appetite-creating climate of England, might be more moderate 

 in the country from which it originally came, were it happily endowed 

 with qualities wherewith to perform a periodical migration across the 

 water. 



" I have now been fully thirty years in striving to improve the 



