NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 8 1 



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. Navi- 

 gators 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. 1 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 further, 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 

 along the Sussex Downs, wherever there were shrubs and 

 bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particularly in the autumn 

 of 1770. 



I am, etc. 

 NOTE 



1 Even in England birds often show great confidence in man. One even- 

 ing last summer I was sitting in Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-Tyne, when 

 a robin hopped close by me ; and as I kept perfectly still, it inspected me 

 closely, flew on to my boot, on to the seat by my side, and closely inspected 

 my hand, then hopped on to my knee, and finally on to my shoulder. G. C. D. 



LETTER XXXIX 



SELBORNE, Nov. qth, 1773. 



DEAR SIR, As you desire me to send you such observa- 

 tions as may occur, I take the liberty of making the following 

 remarks, that you may, according as you think me right or 

 wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in your intended 

 new edition of the " British Zoology." 

 7 



