XATUUAL HISTORY OF SELBOIINE. 
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 XXIL ^ 
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 famihar 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 puflins are sometimes to be 
found in the same warren, and not very far from each other, 
t James, chap. iii. 7. 
E 2 
