82 TOADS GKEEN LIZARD. 



folk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly fur- 

 nished with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom.* 

 "We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds 

 a-year, whose houses of worship make little better appear- 

 ance than dovecots. "When I first saw Northamptonshire, 

 Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, and the Fens of 

 Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which 

 presented themselves in every point of view. As an admirer 

 of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own 

 country, for such objects are very necessary ingredients in 

 an elegant landscape. 



What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises 

 my curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, 

 has well remarked, that " Every kind of beasts, and of birds, 

 and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath 

 been tamed of mankind." t 



It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has 

 actually been procured for you in Devonshire, because it 

 corroborates my discovery, which I made many years ago, 

 of the same sort, on a sunny sand-bank near Farnham, in 

 Surrey. I am well acquainted with the south hams of 

 Devonshire, and can suppose that district, from its southerly 

 situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in their 

 best colours. 



Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly 

 not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those 

 which visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not 

 English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of 

 Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ; and it will 

 be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they 

 come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two 



* Necessity often obliges birds to build in odd places. A pair of magpies 

 in a district where there were no trees, made their nest in a gooseberry-bush 

 in a cotter's garden, and surrounded it with brambles, furze, &c. in so ingenious 

 a manner that no one would get at the eggs without pulling the materials to 

 pieces. I have seen a colony of rooks build on the top of some young ash 

 trees growing close to a farmhouse door, the trees being very spindly, and not 

 mere than teu or twelve feet high. There were no large trees in the neigh- 

 bourhood. And I may mention that I saw at Pipe Hall, in Warwickshire, a 

 swallow's uest built on th* knocker of a door. ED. 

 + St. James, chap. iii. 7. 



