232, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
any wild fowls ; nor will they touch the fetid bodies of birds 
that feed on offal and garbage ; and indeed there may be some- 
what of providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike ; 
for vultures,! and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were 
intended to be messmates with dogs over their carrion; and 
seem to be appointed by nature as fellow-scavengers to remove 
all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth. 
LETTER LIV; 
The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest is not 
yet all exhausted ; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble 
upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a 
laborer,of Oakhanger to a carpenter of this village ; this was 
the butt-end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about five 
inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from the 
ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as black as ebony. 
Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured 
it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at 
Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet-work, by inlays 
ing it along with whiter woods. 
Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in 
spring and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing 
by on the wing, and repeating often a short quick note. This 
bird I have remarked myself, but never could make out till 
lately. JI am assured now that it is the stone-curlew. Some of 
them pass over or near my house almost every evening after 
it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and North Fields, away 
down towards Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, 
1“ Hasselquist, in his 7vavels to the Levant, observes that the dogs and 
vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as to bring up 
their young together in the same place,” 
