HERONRY GOAT-SUCKER. 57 



It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has 

 actually been procured for you in Devonshire, because it 

 corroborates my discovery, which I made many years ago, of 

 the same sort, on a sunny sand-bank near Farnham, in Surrey. 

 I am well acquainted with the south hams of Devonshire, and 

 can suppose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a 

 proper habitation for such animals in their best colours. 



Since the ringousels of your vast mountains do certainly 

 not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those 

 which visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not 

 English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of 

 Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ; and it will be 

 worthy your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they 

 come, and to inquire why they make so short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two species 

 of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in 

 your description of the heronry at Cressi-hall, which is a 

 curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of 

 such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as 

 many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in 

 your next whose seat Cressi-hall is, and near what town it 

 lies.* I have often thought that those vast extents of fens 

 have never been sufficiently explored. If half-a-dozen gentle- 

 men, furnished with a good strength of water spaniels, were 

 to beat them over for a week, they would certainly find more 

 species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 

 more than that of the caprimulgus, the goat-sucker, as it is a 

 wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always found, that 

 though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, 

 yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough ; and 

 I have for many a half hour watched it as it sat with its under 

 mandible quivering, and particularly this .summer. It perches 

 usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in 

 an attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio 

 British Zoology. This bird is most punctual in beginning its 



more particular in recording these facts," he observes, " because some 

 modern philosophers have attempted to explode such accounts as wholly 

 fabulous." Mr Jesse informs us, that he knew a gentleman who put a 

 toad into a small flower-pot, and secured it, so that no insect could pene- 

 trate it, and then buried it so deep in his garden that it was secured 

 against the influence of frost. At the end of twenty years, he took it up, 

 and found the toad increased in bulk, and healthy. ED. 

 * Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



