138 The Natural History of Selborne 



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. 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. 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 afternoon ; 

 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, &c. 



