NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 99 



things) will come to the man : I hope you will have it in 

 your power to meet me in London, & that you will 

 gratify me with an opportunity of waiting on you to 

 Selborne.] 



It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our 

 green lizards may be specifically the same ; all that I know 

 is, that, when some years ago many Guernsey lizards were 

 turned loose in Pembroke college garden, in the University 

 of Oxford, they lived a great while, and seemed to enjoy 

 themselves very well, but never bred. Whether this circum- 

 stance will prove anything either way I shall not pretend 

 to say. 



I return you thanks for your account of Cressi-hall ; 

 but recollect, not without regret, that in June 1746 I was 

 visiting for a week together at Spalding, without ever being 

 told that such a curiosity was just at hand. Pray send me 

 word in your next what sort of tree it is that contains such 

 a quantity of herons' nests ; and whether the heronry con- 

 sists of a whole grove of wood, or only of a few trees. 



It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well 

 about the caprimulgus : all I contended for was to prove 

 that it often chatters sitting as well as flying ; and therefore 

 the noise was voluntary, and from organic impulse, and 

 not from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its 

 mouth and throat. 



If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last 

 Michaelmas-fay. I was travelling, and out early in the 

 morning : at first there was a vast fog ; but, by the time 

 that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the 

 coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We 

 were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, 

 as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows 

 (hirundines rustica) clustering on the stunted shrubs and 

 bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as 

 the air became clear and pleasant they all were on the 

 wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded 

 on southward towards the sea : after this I did not see any 

 more flocks, only now and then a straggler. 



