CHANGE OF HABITS IN ANIMALS 401 



it betook itself to low ground and arable land, to the 

 astonishment of naturalists familiar with its continental 

 habits. In the sixteenth century, Gesner, in recording 

 (i 550) the vast numbers of Rabbits in England, "copia ingens 

 cuniculorum" drew special attention to the fact that they 

 delighted in woods and groves, although in Spain they were 

 confined to hilly and rocky places. Occasionally in our 

 country, the Rabbit shows an interesting return to its old 

 habit. Although Rabbits are fairly common on the lower 

 ground about Corrour in western Inverness-shire, Dr Eagle 

 Clarke has recorded that a small number had colonized 

 some rough rocky slopes near Lochan Coire an Lochan, at 

 an altitude of 2250 feet, where, however, they were ex- 

 terminated by severe snowstorms in 1916. 



Or take the case of our Peregrines and Buzzards : at the 

 present day they mostly nest in cliffs, but in other countries 

 they breed freely on trees, and probably once did so in 

 Britain, for Sir H. Ellis mentions a nesting-place in Sussex 

 woods belonging to Battle Abbey, founded by William the 

 Conqueror, "iii nidi acceptr' in silva." It is not likely that 

 nests of the Sparrow Hawk which were common, would 

 have been thought worthy of mention, so it is probable that 

 the remark refers to eyries of the Peregrine or perhaps of 

 the Goshawk. 



THE INFLUENCE OF HOUSES 



Other creatures have chosen a new type of domicile, 

 which, one might have imagined, was fraught with danger 

 to their welfare the habitations of men. The Stork builds 

 on the chimney tops of Europe, the shy African Thick-knee 

 on the flat roofs of buildings in Cairo Zoological Gardens, 

 but the most striking cases are those of the House Martin, 

 the Swallow and the Swift. Swifts have been known to fre- 

 quent their original type of nesting-site, building their loose 

 beds of grass in the chinks of a cliff-face, but it is seldom 

 indeed that they forsake their adopted place in the holes and 

 crannies of human habitations. House Martins and Swallows 

 so universally build in the shelter of houses, that it is rare 

 to find any trace of their original habits. Yet occasionally 

 a Swallow, building its nest in a tree or on a sea-cliff, or a 



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