RINGOUSEL. 71 



Your approbation, with regard to my new 

 discovery of the migration of the ringousel, 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 ringousels 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 productions ; 

 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. 



XXII. 



As to the peculiarity of jack-daws 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, Hamp- 

 shire 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 appearance than dovecots. When I 

 first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and 

 Huntingdonshire, and the Fens of Lincolnshire, 



