OF SELBORNE 55 



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 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 worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence 

 they come, and to inquire why they make so very short 

 a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two 

 species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertain- 

 ment in your description of the heronry at Cressi-hall ; 

 which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Four- 

 score 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 gentlemen, 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 an 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 

 song exactly at the close of day; so exactly that I have 

 known it strike up more than once or twice just at the 

 report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear 



^ Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 



