50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOIINE. 



notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards to watch them 

 most narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the 

 dead of the winter. When I have obtained information 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 extraordinary, 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 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 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 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 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 sea-side, or near some great river, my natural 

 propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted 



