162 MARTINS RINGOUSELS. 



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 3rd; when twenty, or perhaps 

 thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by 

 the side of the Hanging-wood, and over my fields. 

 Did these small weak birds, some of which were 

 nestlings 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 sand-bank, lake, or pool (as a more 

 northern naturalist would say), may become their 

 hybernaculum, and afford them a ready and obvious 

 retreat ? 



We now begin to expect our vernal migration of 

 ringousels every week. Persons worthy of credit 

 assure me, that ringousels 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, it is plain, from the fearless disregard 

 that they shew for men or guns, that they have 

 been little accustomed to places of much resort. 

 Navigators mention, that, in the Isle of Ascension, 



all sustenance whatever. The animal emerged about the end of 

 April, and remained for at least a fortnight before it ventured on 

 taking any species of food. Its skin was not perceptibly cold : 

 its respiration, entirely effected through the nostrils, was languid. 

 I visited the animal, for the last time, on the 9th of June, 1813, 

 during a thunder storm : it then lay under the shelter of a cauli- 

 flower, and apparently torpid." MURRAY'S Experimental Re~ 

 searches. W. J. 



