letter of November the 4th, 1767. Last week the 

 aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or 

 thirty, of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens : 

 and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have 

 observed these birds last spring, about Lady-day, as 

 it were, on their return to the north. If these birds 

 should prove the ousels of the north of England, then 

 here is a migration disclosed within our own king- 

 dom never before remarked. It does not yet appear 

 whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island 

 to the south ; but it is most probable that they usu- 

 ally do, or else one cannot suppose that they would 

 have continued so long unnoticed in the southern 

 counties. The ousel is larger than a blackbird, and 

 feeds on haws ; but last autumn (when there were no 

 haws) it fed on yew-berries ; in the spring it feeds on 

 ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March 

 and April. 



I must not omit to tell you (as you have been 

 lately on the study of reptiles) that my people, every 

 now and then of late, draw up with a bucket of water 

 from my well, which is 63 feet deep, a large black 

 warty lizard, with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How 

 they first came down at that depth, and how they 

 were ever to have got out thence without help, is 

 more than I am able to say. 



My thanks are due to you for your trouble and 

 care in the examination of a buck's head. As far as 

 your discoveries reach at present, they seem much 



78 



