RINGOUSELS. 67 



These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the 

 following Linnaean genera : 



1, 2, 3, Turdus. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Anas. 



4, Corvus. 15, 16, Loxia. 



5, 6, 7, Scolopax. 17, Ampdis. 

 8, Columba. 



Birds that sing in the night are but few : 



- T . , A . , r - . f " In shadiest covert hid. " 



Nightingale, Luscima. j MILTON. 



Woodlark, Alauda arborea. Suspended in mid air. 



") Passer arundinaceus f Among reeds and wil- 

 Less reed-sparrow, j ^.^ | low j 



I should now proceed to such birds as continue to sing after 

 midsummer, but as they are rather numerous, they would 

 exceed the bounds of this paper ; besides, as this is now the 

 season for remarking on that subject, I am willing to repeat 

 my observations on some birds, concerning the continuation 

 of whose song I seem at present to have some doubt. 



LETTER XXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, August 30, 1769. 



DEAR SIR, It gives me satisfaction to find that my account 

 of the ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd 

 question, when you ask me how I know that their autumnal 

 migration is southward ? Were not candour and openness the 

 very life of natural history, I should pass over this query just 

 as a sly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a 

 classic ; but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, 

 not without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned in 

 that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds 

 migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder 

 winters, and return to the northward again, when the rigorous 

 cold abates, so I concluded that the ringousels did the same, as 

 well as their congeners, the fieldfares ; and especially as ring- 

 ousels are known to haunt cold mountainous countries ; but I 

 have good reason to suspect since, that they may come to us 

 from the westward ; because I hear, from very good authority, 

 that they breed on Dartmoor : and that they forsake that wild 

 district about the time that our visitors appear, and do not 

 return till late in the spring. 



I have taken a great deal of pains about your salicaria and 



