NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 105 



numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their 

 wings against the hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable 

 distance : since that no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers. 



Some swifts stayed late, till the 22nd August a rare instance ! 

 for they usually withdraw within the first week. 



On September 24th three or four ring-ousels appeared in my fields 

 for the first time this season ; how punctual are these visitors ic 

 their autumnal and spring migrations ! 



LETTER XXXVIII. 



SELBORNE, March i$tk, 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 ist October, I saw young martins in their nest 

 nearly fledged ; and again on the 2ist 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 3rd; 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 hyber- 

 naculunij 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 migra- 

 tions are only internal, and not extended to the continent south- 



