NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 63 



LETTER XXII. 



TO THE SAME.* 



SELBORNE, Jan. zna, 1709. 



DEAR SIR,-- As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us 

 under the ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the 

 reason ; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all 

 this country. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and 

 Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any coun- 

 ties 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, Cam- 

 bridgeshire, 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."! 



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 sandbank 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. 



* This letter with the preceding one are as usual full of observation, and might have 

 been written to any correspondent without the vievy of publication. 



The jackdaw is one of those familiar birds which accommodates its habits to circum- 

 stances. In Great Britain it may be said to be altogether in an artificial condition incidental 

 to population and commerce, and the works of man form very convenient retreats to sleep 

 or nestle in, which it would otherwise have had to discover in some natural locality. In 

 an entirely natural state the rugged precipices and caves on the sea-coast, mountainous 

 rocks abounding with holes and fissures and clothed with ivy, are the places resorted to, 

 or in a woodland district an aged and hollow tree may be chosen. The selection of rabbit- 

 burrows is accidental, and they are used instead of natural or scraped holes, sometimes by 

 a very miscellaneous assemblage ; rabbits and jackdaws, sheldrakes and puffins, are some- 

 times to be found in the same warren, and not very far from each other. 



t James, chap. iii. 7. 



