54 The Natural History 



the dead of the winter. When I have obtained in- 

 formation 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 extra- 

 ordinary, 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 7no7iedulce) 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. 



Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as 

 a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These 

 birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the 

 upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of 

 antiquity : which circumstance alone speaks the pro- 

 digious height of the upright stones, that they should be 

 tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of 

 shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place. 



One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 

 26th, saw a martin in a sheltered bottom : the sun shone 

 warm, and the bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am 

 now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this 

 island in the winter. 



You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve 

 and caution concerning the cures done by toads : for, let 

 people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there 



