A little of this is caused by the gluten that cements the calcareous matter, but the overpowering fetor comes from the inner membrane that lines the shell. The superstitions and fancies of persons, though we may often contemn them, are yet at times deserving of notice, being occasionally to be traced to some former received belief or national custom, and perhaps when charactered by emblems or ceremonies may be considered as certainly originating from the tenets of some sect or popular observance; the partiality manifested by the English in general for flowers and horticultural pursuits is recently, from a sentence in Pliny (Nat. Hist. XIV. chap. 4), supposed to have been acquired from their Roman conquerors; and probably many other attachments and practices, though obscured and perverted by time, have been retained from the example of some of the various nations who have ruled in our island. Bird-nesting boys, I suppose, are yet to be met with in many a rural village, being a habit from immemorial antiquity, pursued with eagerness in contention with their fellows for numbers and rarity, but that accomplished, like so many of our pursuits in after life, the pleasure ceases when rivalry is no more: but regarding these birds’ eggs we have a very foolish superstition here; the boys may take them unrestrained, but their mothers so dislike their being kept in the house, that they usually break them; their presence may be tolerated for a few days, but by the ensuing Sunday are frequently destroyed, under the idea that they bring bad luck, or prevent the coming of good fortune, as if in some way offensive to the domestic deity of the hearth: having occasionally inquired for these plunders of our small birds at the cottages, to supply some deficiencies in a collection, I have found so general a prepossession against retaining them, as in most cases to fail of success.