CHAPTER XII. 



BIRDS. 



WE have great plenty of larkes, and very good ones, especially in Golem-fields and those parts 

 adjoyning to Coteswold. They take them by alluring them with a dareing-glasse,* which is whirled 

 about in a sun-shining day, and the larkes are pleased at it, and strike at it, as at a sheepe's eye, 

 and at that time the nett is drawn over them. While he playes with his glasse he whistles with his 

 larke-call of silver, a tympanum of about the diameter of a threepence. In the south part of Wiltshire 

 they doe not use dareing-glasses but catch these pretty artheriall birds with trammolls. 



The buntings doe accompany the larkes. Linnets on the downes. Woodpeckers severall sorts : 

 many in North Wilts. 



Sir Bennet Hoskins, Baronet, told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton in Hereford- 

 shire, did, for experiment sake, drive an iron naile thwert the hole of the woodpecker's nest, there 

 being a tradition that the damme will bring some leafe to open it He layed at the bottome of the 

 tree a cleane sheet, and before many hourcs passed the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by 

 it on the sheete. Quaere the shape or figure of the leafe. They say the moone-wort will doe such 

 things. This experiment may easily be tryed again. As Sir Walter Raleigh saies, there are 

 stranger things to be seen in the world than are between London and Stanes. [This is the "story" 

 wliich Ray, in the letter printed in page 8, justly describes as, " without doubt, a fable." J. B.] 



In Sir James Long's parke at Draycot Cerne arc some wheat-eares ; and on conie warrens 

 and downes, but not in great plenty. Sussex doth most abound with these. It is a great delicacie, 

 and they are little lumps of f'att. 



On Salisbury plaines, especially about Stonehenge, are bustards. They are also in the fields 

 above Lavington : they doe not often come to Chalke. (Many about Newmarket, and sometimes 

 cranes. J. EVELYN.) [In the " Penny Cyclopajdia " are many interesting particulars of the 

 bustard, and in Hoare's " Ancient Wiltshire, vol. i. p. 94, there is an account of two of these birds 

 which were seen near Warminster in the summer of 1801 ; since when the bustard has not been 

 seen in the county. J. B.] 



On Salisbury plaines are gray crowes, as at Royston. [These are now met with on the Marl- 

 borough downs. J. B.] 



" Like Royston crowes, where, as a man may say, 



Are friars of both the orders, black and gray." J. CLEVELAND'S POEMS. 



' Tis certain that the rookes of the Inner Temple did not build their nests in the garden to breed 

 in the spring before the plague, 1665 ; but in the spring following they did. 



Feasants were brought into Europe from about the Caspian sea. There are no pheasants in 

 Spaine, nor doe I heare of any in Italy. Capt Hen. Bertie, the Earle of Abingdon's brother, when 



* [" Let his grace go forward, and dare us with his cap like larkt.-'Sludspere, Henry Till. Act iii. sc. 2.J 



