NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 51 



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. 



I am. &c. 



LETTER XXII. 



TO THE SAME.* 



SELBORNE, Jan. 2nd, 1769. 



DEAR SIR, 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 

 country. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are 

 as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the king- 

 dom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, 

 whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dovecots. 

 When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdon- 

 shire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of 

 spires which presented themselves in every point of view. As an 

 admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own 

 country ; for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant 

 landscape. 



What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my 

 curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked 

 that " Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things 

 in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind." f 



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 sandbank 

 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 ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake 

 them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this neigh- 

 bourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the 

 more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ; 



* This letter with the preceding one are as usual full of observation, and might 

 have been written to any correspondent without the view of publication. 



The jackdaw is one of those familiar birds which accommodates its habits to 

 circumstances. In Great Britain it may be said to be altogether in an artificial 

 condition incidental to population and commerce, and the works of man form very 

 convenient retreats to sleep or nestle in, which it would otherwise have had to 

 discover in some natural locality. In an entirely natural state the rugged precipices 

 and caves on the sea-coast, mountainous rocks abounding with holes and fissures 

 and clothed with ivy, are the places resorted to, or in a woodland district an aged 

 and hollow tree may be chosen. The selection of rabbit burrows is accidental, and 

 they are used instead of natural or scraped holes, sometimes by a very miscellaneous 

 assemblage; rabbits and jackdaws, sheldrakes and puffins are sometimes to be 

 found in the same warren, and not very far from each other. 



t James, chap. iii. 7. 



s 2 



