OP SELBORNE. 161 



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 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 accus- 

 tomed 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 fur- 

 ther, 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. 



M 



