RINGOUSELS. 97 



that subject, I am willing to repeat my observations 

 on some birds, concerning the continuation of whose 

 song I seem at present to have some doubt. 



LETTER XXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Aug. 30, 1769. 

 DEAR SIR, 



IT gives me satisfaction to find that my account 

 of the ousel migration pleases you. You put a very 

 shrewd question when you ask me how I know that 

 their autumnal migration is southward ? Were not 

 candour and openness the very life of natural history, 

 I should pass over this query just as a sly commen- 

 tator does over a crabbed passage in a classic ; but 

 common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not 

 without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned 

 in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal 

 birds migrate from the northward to us, to partake 

 of our milder winters, and return to the northward 

 again, when the rigorous cold abates, so I concluded 

 that the ringousels did the same, as well as their 

 congeners, the fieldfares; and especially as ringousels 

 are known to haunt cold mountainous countries : but 

 I have good reason to suspect since, that they may 

 come to us from the westward ; because I hear from 

 very good authority, that they breed on Dartmoor : 

 and that they forsake that wild district about the time 

 that our visitors appear, and do not return till late in 

 the spring. 



I have taken a great deal of pains about your 

 salicaria and mine, with a white stroke over its eye, 

 and a tawny rump. I have surveyed it alive and 



