80 JACK-DAWS. 



motions of these birds ; and besides, as I nave prevailed 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 obseve, that a bird 

 so common with us should never straggle to you.* 



And here will be the properest place to mention, while 

 I think of it, an anecdote which the above mentioned gen- 

 tleman told me when I was last at his house ; which was, 

 that in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws (corvi 

 monedulce) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under 

 ground.f 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 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) J 



* This species is extremely local, being scarcely found out of Hampshire, 

 Norfolk, and one or two of the eastern counties of England. W. J. 



Mr. Herbert says that "he has only found it on chalk. It never strayed 

 on the sand or gravel, and consequently was not oil the heaths, but in the 

 chalky turnip fields." This species is, no doubt, extremely local and only- 

 finds the food it requires, chiefly small green beetles, on chalk soils. ED. 



f 1 Daws build in a great variety of odd places, and use curious materials 

 for their nests. Clothes-pegs and lucifer match-boxes have been found in 

 them. They have been known to carry away the wooden labels from a 

 botanic garden. In one instance, no less than eighteen dozen of these labels 

 are said to be found in one chimney where the daws built. In my "Scenes 

 and Tales of Country Life," I have given an engraving of a daw's nest built 

 in the bell tower of Eton chapel, perhaps one of the most curious structures 

 on record. ED. 



Mr. Yarrell informs me that a series of interesting experiments might be 

 made with the view to ascertain by artificial means how low a degree of tem- 

 perature swallows could sustain for a time without destroying life. ED. 



