152 MAETIKS. EING-OUSELS. 



their nests, nearly fledged ; and again, on the 21st 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 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 nest- 

 lings 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 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, it 

 is plain, from the fearless disregard that they show for men 

 or guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of 

 much resort. Navigators mention that in the Isle of Ascen- 

 sion, and other 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 



of the garden : it entered in an inclined plane, excavating the earth in the 

 manner of the mole; the depth to which it penetrated varied with the 

 character of the approaching season, being from one to two feet, according as 

 the winter was mild or severe. It may be added, that, for nearly a month 

 prior to this entry into its dormitory, it refused 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 cauliflower, and apparently 

 torpid." MURRAY'S Experimental Researches. W. J. 



