9 o NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



the suspicions concerning the extraordinary provision for 

 smelling bestowed on that animal would have been cleared 

 up at once by that Gent : in a matter so much in his 

 own way.] 



With regard to the cedicnemus, or stone-curlew, I intend 

 to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, 1 in whose 

 neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound ; and shall 

 urge him to take particular notice when they begin to con- 

 gregate, and afterwards to watch them most narrowly 

 whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead 

 of the winter. When I have obtained information with 

 respect to this circumstance, 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 straggle 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 joining to his outlet, many daws (corvi 

 monedula) 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. 



1 Professor Bell says that Gilbert White's friend " near Chichester, : ' was Mr 

 John Woods of Chilgrove (about six miles from Chichester, lying under the chalk 

 down called Bow Hill). He adds : " The stone-curlew, I am informed, is still 

 occasionally met with; but its numbers are now but few" (ed. "Selborne," 

 vol. i. p. 61 note). [R. B. S.] 



