NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 99 
Some swifts stayed late, till the twenty-second of August—a rare 
instance ! for they usually withdraw within the first week.* 
On September the twenty-forth three or four ring-ousels appeared 
in my fields for the first time this season ; how punctual are these 
visitors in their autumnal and spring migrations ! 
LETS peek VIELE. 
TO THE SAME. 
SELBORNE, March 15th, 1773. 
DEAR SIR,—By my journal for last autumn it appears that the 
house-martins bred very late, and stayed very late in these parts ; 
for, on the first of October, I saw young martins in their nest nearly 
fledged ; and again on the twenty-first of October, we had at the 
next house a nest full of young martins just ready to fly; and the 
old ones were hawking for insects with great alertness. The next 
morning the brood forsook their nest, and were flying round the 
village. From this day I never saw one of the swallow kind till 
November the third; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house- 
martins were playing all day long by the side of the hanging wood, 
and over my field. Did these small weak birds, some of which 
were nestling twelve days ago, shift their quarters at this late season 
of the year to the other side of the northern tropic? Or rather, is 
it not more probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep 
covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern 
naturalist would say), may become their hydernaculum, and afford 
them a ready and obvious retreat ? 
We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every 
week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were 
seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge 
of this county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are 
only internal, and not extended to the continent southward, if they 
do at first come at all from the northern parts of this island only, 
and not from the north of Europe. Come from whence they will, 
itis plain, from the fearless disregard that they show for men or 
* See Letter LIII. to Mr. Barrington. 
