Feasants were brought Into Europe from about the Caspian sea. There are no pheasants in Spaine, nor doe I heare of any in Italy. Capt. Hen. Bertie, the Earle of Abingdon’s brother, when he was in Italy, was at the great Duke of Tuscany’s court entertained with all the rarities that the country afforded, but he sawe no pheasants. Mr. Wyld Clarke, factor fifteen yeares in Barberie, affirmes there are none there. Sir John Mordaunt, who had a command at Tangier twenty-five yeares, and had been some time governour there, a great lover of field sports, affirmes that there are no pheasants in Africa or Spaine. [See Ray’s Letter to Aubrey, ante, page 8.] Bitterns in the breaches at Allington, &c. Herons bred heretofore, sc. about 1580, at Easton-Piers, before the great oakes were felled down neer the mannour-house; and they doe still breed in Farleigh Parke. An eirie of sparrow-hawkes at the parke at Kington St. Michael. The hobbies doe goe away at….. and return at the spring. Quære Sir James Long, if any other hawkes doe the like? Ganders are vivacious animals. Farmer Ady of Segary had a gander that was fifty yeares old, which the soldiers killed. He and his gander were both of the same age. (A goose is now living, anno 1757, at Hagley hall in Worcestershire, full fifty yeares old. MS. NOTE.) Sea-mewes. Plentie of them at Colern-downe; elsewhere in Wiltshire I doe not remember any. There are presages of weather made by them. [Instead of “presages of weather,” the writer would have been more accurate if he had said that when “sea-mewes,” or other birds of the ocean, are seen so far inland as Colern, at least twenty miles from the sea, they indicate stormy weather in their natural element.—J. B.]-Virgil’s Georgics, lib. i. Englished by Mr. T. May:- “The seas are ill to sailors evermore When cormorants fly crying to the shore; From the mid-sea when sea-fowl pastime make Upon dry land; when herns the ponds forsake, And, mounted on their wings, doe fly aloft.” CHAPTER XIII. REPTILS AND INSECTS. [THIS Chapter contains several extraordinary recipes for medicines to be compounded in various ways from insects and reptiles. As a specimen one of them may he referred to which begins as follows:-“Calcinatio Bufonum. R. Twenty great fatt toades; in May they are the best; putt them alive in a pipkin; cover it, make a fire round it to the top; let them stay on the fire till they make no noise,” &c. &c. Aubrey says that Dr. Thomas Willis mentions this medicine in his tractat De Febribus, and describes it as a special remedy for the plague and other diseases.—J. B.] No snakes or adders at Chalke, and toades very few: the nitre in the chalke is inimique to them. No snakes or adders at Harcot-woods belonging to — Gawen, Esq.; but in the woods of Compton Chamberleyn adjoyning they are plenty. At South Wraxhall and at Colern Parke, and so to Mouncton-Farley, are adders.