58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



gentleman told me when I was last at his house ; which was 

 that, in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws (Corvi 

 monedulce) 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 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 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 anything from 

 common report, especially in print, without expressing some 

 degree of doubt and suspicion. 



Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of 

 the migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; and 

 I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are 



