92 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



nest nearly fledged; and again, on the 21st 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 the 3rd of 

 November ; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house-martins 

 were playing all day long by the side of the hanging wood, 

 and over my fields. 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 1 



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 



