52 WHITE 



When I have obtained information with respect to this circum- 

 stance, I shall have finished my history of the stone-curlew, 

 which I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I 

 trust, very near the truth. This gentleman, as he occupies a 

 large farm of his own, and is abroad early and late, will be a 

 very proper spy upon the motions of these birds ; and besides, 

 as I have 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 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 join- 

 ing to his outlet, many daws (corvi monedulce) built 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 annoy- 

 ance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place. 



One of my neighbors 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 satis- 

 fied 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. 



