folk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom.* 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 Huntingdonshire; 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."+ 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 sand-bank 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 neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable; and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay. In your account of your error with regard to the two * Necessity often obliges birds to build in odd places. A pair of magpies in a district where there were no trees, made their nest in a gooseberry-bush in a cotter's garden, and surrounded it with brambles, furze, &c. in so ingenious a manner that no one would get at the eggs without pulling the materials to pieces. I have seen a colony of rooks build on the top of some young ash trees growing close to a farmhouse door, the trees being very spindly, and not mere than ten or twelve feet high. There were no large trees in the neighbourhood. And I may mention that I saw at Pipe Hall, in Warwickshire, a swallow's nest built on the knocker of a door.-Ev. St. James, chap. iii. 7. species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressy-hall, which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree, is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of.* Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressy-hall is, and near what town it lies. I have often thought that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half-adozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly find more species. There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and curious creature; but I have always found, that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for many a half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio British Zoology. This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day; so exactly, that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt, that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I assure you, that, as my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice, and began to chatter, and con * One of the finest heronries we now have is perhaps the one in Windsor Great Park, taking into account the number of nests, and the noble and great heighth of the beech-trees on which they are built. I once witnessed an interesting fight at this heronry between a pair of ravens and some of the herons. It was early in the spring, and the former birds evidently wanted to take possession of one of the nests of the latter, who, however, did not appear to wish for so dangerous a neighbour. The fight was continued in the air for a length of time, but in the end the herons had the advantage and beat off the ravens.-ED. + Cressy-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. tinued his note for many minutes; and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building! This bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times; and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying manner through the boughs of a tree.* * Mr. White's excellent description of this curious species, in the present and subsequent letters, is only equalled by those of a most accurate American ornithologist, whose delineations of the manners of the different species that occurred to him, ought to be examined as models by every describing naturalist. Mr. Wilson thus beautifully describes the calling of the Whip-poor-will of the Americans :-" On or about the 25th of April, if the season be not uncommonly cold, the Whip-poor-will is heard in Pennsylvania, in the evening, as the dusk of twilight commences, or in the morning, as soon as dawn has broke. The notes of this solitary bird, from the ideas which are naturally associated with them, seem like the voice of an old friend, and are listened to by almost all with great interest. At first they issue from some retired part of the woods, the glen, or mountain; in a few evenings, perhaps, we hear them from the adjoining coppice, the garden fence, the road before the door, and even the roof of the dwelling-house, hours after the family have retired to rest. Some of the more ignorant and superstitious consider this near approach as foreboding no good to the family, nothing less than the sickness, misfortune, or death of some of its members. Every morning and evening his shrill and rapid repetitions are heard from the adjoining woods; and when two or more are calling at the same time, as is often the case in the pairing season, and at no great distance from each other, the noise, mingling with the echoes from the mountains, is really surprising. Strangers, in parts of the country where these birds are numerous, find it almost impossible for some time to sleep; while to those long acquainted with them, the sound often serves as a lullaby, to assist their repose. The notes seem pretty plainly to articulate the words which have been generally applied to them, Whip-poor-will, the first and last syllables being uttered with great emphasis, and the whole in about a second to each repetition; but when two or more males meet, their whip-poor-will altercations become much more rapid and incessant, as if each were straining to overpower or silence the other. When near, you often hear an introductory cluck between the notes. At these times, as well as almost at all others, they fly low, not more than a few feet from the surface, skimming about the house and before the door, alighting on the wood-pile, or settling on the roof. Towards midnight they generally become silent, unless in clear moonlight, when they are heard, with little intermission, till morning."-W. J. The night-jar appears to have been a very favourite bird with Mr. White, who has described Its habits with great accuracy. It is by no means as common a bird as when Mr. White wrote, owing to the numerous enclosures which have since taken place, of the favourite haunts of this bird, and of the anxiety of collectors to possess specimens of it. Keepers also, either mistaking it for a bird of prey, or from mere wantonness, kill it when they can |