OF SELBORNE. 95 



martins bred very late, and staid very late in these parts ; for, 

 on the first of October, I saw young martins in their nests 

 nearly fledged ; and again, on the twenty-first 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 third ; 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 sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern natura- 

 list 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 Sere, 

 on the southern verge of this county. Hence we may con- 

 clude 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, and other 

 such 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 so about that 

 town in the autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one after- 

 noon : he added farther, that some had appeared since in every 

 autumn ; but he could not find that any had been observed 

 before the season in which he shot so many. I myself have 

 found these birds in little parties in the autumn cantoned all 



