78 
NATURAL HISTORY 
Barker, wlio has measured the rain for more than thirty 
years, says, in a late letter, that more has fallen this year 
than in any he ever attended to ; though, from July, 1763, 
to January, 1764, more fell than in any seven months of 
this year. 
LETTER XXIII. 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, Feb. 28, 1769. 
T is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard 
and our green lizards may be specifically 
the same; all that I know is, that, when 
some years ago many Guernsey lizards were 
turned loose in Pembroke College garden, 
in the University of Oxford, they lived a great while, and 
seemed to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred. 
Whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I 
shall not pretend to say. 
I return you thanks for your account of ' Cressi Hall ; 
but recollect, not without regret, that in June, 1746, I was 
visiting for a week together at Spalding, without ever 
being told that such a curiosity was just at hand. Pray 
send me word in your next what sort of tree it is that 
contains such a quantity of herons^ nests ; and whether the 
heronry consist of a whole grove or wood, or only of a few 
trees. 
It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about 
the Caprimulgus : all I contended for was to prove that it 
often chatters sitting as well as flying ; and therefore the 
noise was voluntary, and from organic impulse, and not 
from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its mouth 
and throat. 
If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last 
Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the 
morning : at first there was a vast fog ; but by the time 
