54 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
caution concerning the cures done by toads: for, let people 
advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is such a 
propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, 
that one cannot safely relate anything from common report, 
especially 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 
which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make 
inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the 
autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short stay they 
make with us ; for in about three weeks they are all gone. I 
shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at 
their return in the spring, as they did last year. 
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. 
If fortune had settled me near the seaside, or near some great 
river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to 
have made myself acquainted 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 com- 
mon sorts which our brooks and lakes produce. 
LETTER XXII. 
SELBORNE, Jan. 2nd, 1769. 
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 county. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hamp- 
shire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as 
almost any counties in the kingdom. We have many livings 
