64 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 

 1767. Last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, 

 twenty or thirty, of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens : 

 and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed 

 these birds last spring, about Lady-day, as it were, on their 

 return to the north. If these birds should prove the ousels of 

 the north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within 

 our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear 

 whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the 

 south ; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one 

 cannot suppose that they would have continued so long un- 

 noticed in the southern counties. The ousel is larger than a 



SANDPIPER'S fan. BUTCHER BIRDS EGO. 



blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there 

 were no haws) it fed on yew-berries ; in the spring it feeds on 

 ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and 

 April. 



I must not omit to tell you (as you have been lately on the 

 study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of late, 

 draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 63 feet 

 deep, a large black warty lizard, with a fin-tail and yellow belly. 

 How they first came down at that depth, and how they were 

 ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am 

 able to say. 



My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the 

 examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach 

 at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions ; and 

 I hope Mr. Hunt may find reason to give his decision in my 

 favour ; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary 



