NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. gg 



Some swifts stayed late, till the twenty-second of August a rare 

 instance ! for they usually withdraw within the first week.* 



On September the twenty-forth three or four ring-ousels appeared 

 in my fields for the first time this season ; how punctual are these 

 visitors in their autumnal and spring migrations ! 



LETTER XXXVIII. 



- 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, March i^th, 1773. 



DEAR SIR, By my journal for last autumn it appears that the 

 house-martins bred very late, and stayed very late in these parts ; 

 for, on the first of October, I saw young martins in their nest 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 field. Did these small weak birds, some of which 

 were nestling 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 

 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 



* See Letter LIII. to Mr. Barrington. 



