it not more probable that the next church, ruin, 

 chalk-cliff, steep covert, or perhaps sand-bank, lake, 

 or pool, may become their hybernaculum, and afford 

 them a ready and obvious retreat? 



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 mi- 

 grations 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 shoul- 

 ders ; 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 

 in the autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one 

 afternoon: he added further, that some had appeared 

 since in every autumn ; but he could not find that 

 any had been observed before the season in which 

 he shot so many. I myself have found these birds 



in little parties in the autumn cantoned all along 



178 



