LETTER XXII 



TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE,yW. 2, 1769. 



DEAR SIR, [Your kind & agreable letter in answer to 

 mine of Novem r 28 th came safe to hand, but without 

 any date. Among the many correspondents that I stand 

 indebted to for their pleasing communications, there are 

 none whose epistles I sit down to answer with more satis- 

 faction than your own.] 



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. 1 And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, 

 Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches 

 as almost any counties in the kingdom. We have many 

 livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose 

 houses of . worship make little better appearance than 

 dovecots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridge- 

 shire, and Huntingdonshire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I 

 was amazed at the number of spires which presented them- 

 selves 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 



1 The nesting of the Jackdaw in rabbit-burrows has been frequently re- 

 corded. [R. B. S.] 



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