parish yields none, the climate is too cold, only the fine dainty
fruits of whortles and blackberries."

One of the pleasantest of tales for winter nights is given by Westcote
himself in his introductory chapters, where he speaks of the air of
Devon as "very healthy, temperate, sweet, and pure," and giving long
life to the inhabitants, more particularly in the good old times, when
men were content to live temperately and frugally, and did not weaken
themselves with delicacies, but subsisted on the bare sustenance
afforded by the earth. Indeed, in the most ancient times they lived on
bark and roots, and on a certain "confection," of which if they took a
small quantity no larger than a bean they neither hungered nor thirsted
for a long while afterwards--so, at least, Diodorus Siculus and Dio
Nicaeus have affirmed, and we can therefore only suppose, in the face
of such authority, that the recipe is long since lost, and that the
habits of Devonshire men have certainly changed since the days when
they lived a hundred and twenty years.

But that must have been before the Phoenicians came to Britain, for
they are certainly reputed to have brought the secret of clotted (or
clouted) cream with them, and to have landed in Cornwall and Devon with
their scald-pans with them, so that the degeneration of the Damnonii in
the matter of delicacies is of very ancient date.

I cannot pass from an account of the wonders of Devon without repeating
Miss Celia Fiennes's description of a "ffowle" (as she calls it) which
lives on the island of Lundy, and which was formerly the property of
her grandfather, Lord Saye and Sele, and "yt lives partly in the water
and partly out, and soe may be called an amphibious Creature." She
does not claim to have seen it herself, for all her wanderings up and
down England a-horseback--which was, by the way, sufficient of an
adventure for a young lady in the seventeenth century--but she is none
the less detailed in her description. This queer bird has one foot
like a turkey, and one like a goose, and its habit of laying its eggs
is "in a place the sun shines on, and sets it soe exactly upright on
the small end, and there it remains until taken up, and all the art and
skill of persons cannot set it up soe again to abide."

She does not give the name of this strange "ffowle," but Lundy is no
unfitting habitat for an amphibious creature which is at least as rare
as the Dodo.

Stories of Henry de Tracy, who