NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 59 



foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not 

 to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your 

 rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very 

 short stay they make with us ; for in about three weeks 

 they are all gone. I shall be very curious to remark 

 whether they will call on us at their return in the spring, 

 as they did last year. 



I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. 

 If fortune had settled me near the seaside, or near some 

 great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged 

 me to have made myself acquainted with their productions ; 

 but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an 

 upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little 

 farther than to those common sorts which our brooks and 

 lakes produce. 



LETTER XXII. 



SELBORNE, Jan. 2nd, 1769. 



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 county. 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 dove- 

 cots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, 

 and Huntingdonshire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was 

 amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves 



