72 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall 

 expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extra- 

 ordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should 

 never struggle 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 monedulos] 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 that manner; but I should never 

 have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground. 1 



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 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 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 



