100 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of much resort. 
Navigators mention that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such 
desolate districts, birds are so little acquainted with the human form 
that they settle on men’s shoulders ; and have no more dread of a 
sailor than they would have of a goat that was grazing.* A young 
man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that about seven years ago 
ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the autumn that he 
killed sixteen himself in one afternoon ; he added further, that 
some had appeared since in every autumn ; but he could not find 
that any had been observed before the season in which he shot so 
many. I myself have found these birds in little parties in the 
autumn cantoned all along the Sussex downs, wherever there were 
shrubs and bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particularly in the 
autumn of 1770. I am, &c. 
DETER xe eX Pe, 
TO THE SAME: 
SELBORNE, Vou. oth, 1773. 
DEAR SiR,—As you desire me to send you such observations as 
may occur, I take the liberty of making the following remarks, 
that you may, according as you think me right or wrong, admit or 
reject what I here advance, in your intended new edition of the 
“‘ British Zoology.” 
The osprey { was shot about a year ago at Frinsham Pond, a great 
lake, at about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle 
of a plough and devouring a fish: it used to precipitate itself into 
the water, and so take its prey by surprise. 
A great ash-coloured § butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted 
Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne: they are vare 
aves in this county. 
* Darwin, writing of the Galapagos islands, remarks of the birds, ‘‘ There is not one which 
will not approach sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes with a cap or 
hat ; a gun is here almost superfluous, for with the muzzle of one I pushed a hawk off the 
branch of a tree. One day a mocking-bird alighted on the edge of a pitcher which I held 
in my hand lying down, it began very quietly to sip the water, and allowed me to lift it 
with the vessel from the ground. I often tried, and very nearly succeeded in catching 
these birds by their legs.” —Voyage of Adventure and Beagle, iii. p. 475. 
+ This with the following letter were written apparently at the request of Mr. Pennant 
for the use of his “‘ British Zoology,” in which they were used as the references show. 
{ British Zoology, vol. 1. p. 128. § p. 161. 
