OF SELBORNE. 63 



people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is 

 such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being 

 deceived, that one cannot safely relate any thing from common 

 report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of 

 doubt and suspicion. 



Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the 

 migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; and I find 

 you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds 

 which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make 

 inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the 

 autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short stay they 

 make with us ; for in about three weeks they are all gone. I 

 shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at 

 their return in the spring, as they did last year. 



I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. 

 If fortune had settled me near the sea-side, or near some great 

 river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to 

 have made myself acquainted with their productious: but as 

 I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an upland district, 

 my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to those 

 common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce. 



I am, <fec. 



LETTER XXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Jan. 2, 17C9. 



DEAR SIR, 



As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the 

 ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the 

 reason ; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples 

 in all this country. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hamp- 

 shire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as 

 almost any counties in the kingdom. We have many livings 

 of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose houses of worship 

 make little better appearance than dovecots. When I first 



