STONEHENGE. 
69 
to his outlet, many daws Ccorvi monedulce) build every year in the 
rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brother used 
to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the 
mouths of the holes ; and, if they heard the young ones cry, they 
twisted the nests out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls 
(viz., the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner ; but I should 
never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat 
ground. 
Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place 
to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their 
nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost 
stones of that amazing work of antiquity : which circumstance 
alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that 
they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the 
annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that 
place. 
One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 26th, saw 
a martin in a sheltered bottom : the sun shone warm, and the 
bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satis- 
fied that they do not all leave this island in the winter. 
You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and 
caution concerning the cures done by toads : for, let people ad- 
vance what they will on stich subjects, yet there is such a pro- 
pensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that 
one cannot safely relate any thing from common report, espe- 
cially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and 
suspicion. 
Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the 
migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; and I find 
you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds 
Stonehenge. 
