of Selborne 55 



is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and 

 being deceived, that one cannot safely relate any thing 

 from common report, especially in print, without ex- 

 pressing some degree of doubt and suspicion. 



Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of 

 the migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; 

 and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they 

 are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I 

 hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring- 

 ousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles 

 me most, is the very short stay they make with us ; for 

 in about three weeks they are all gone. I shall be very 

 curious to remark whether they will call on us at their 

 return in the spring, as they did last year. 



I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. 

 If fortune had settled me near the sea-side, or near some 

 great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged 

 me to have made myself acquainted with their pro- 

 ductions : but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and 

 in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends 

 little farther than to those common sorts which our 

 brooks and lakes produce. 



I am, etc. 



LETTER XXII 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



Selborne, July 2, 1769. 



Dear Sir, 

 As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under 

 the ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon 

 the reason ; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers 

 or steeples in all this country. And perhaps, Norfolk 

 excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished 

 with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom. 

 We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a 

 year, whose houses of worship make little better appear- 

 ance than dovecots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, 



