90 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 monedulce] 

 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. 



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, 

 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. 1 



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 de- 

 ceived, 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 



1 In this our author was, of course, mistaken. El. 



