136 The Natural History of Selborne 



that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep covert, or perhaps sand- 

 bank, lake or pool (as a more 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. 

 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 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. 



