ving 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 common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce.

I am, etc.

LETTER XXII.

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 county. And
perhaps, Norfolk 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 county; 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 Devons