70 JACK-DAWS. 



And here will be the properest place to men- 

 tion, 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 monidulce) 

 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 this 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 Stone- 

 henge. These birds deposit their nests in the inter- 

 stices between the upright and the impost stones 

 of that amazing work of antiquity ; which circum- 

 stance alone speaks the prodigious 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 is such a propensity in 

 mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, 

 that one cannot safely relate any thing from com- 

 mon report, especially in print, without expressing 

 some degree of doubt and suspicion. 



