44 NATURAL HISTORY 



Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feed- 

 ing on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the 

 description of the Merula torquata, 1 or ring-ouzel, were 

 lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people 

 to procure me a specimen, but without success. 2 



Query Might not canary birds be naturalized to this 

 climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into 

 the nest of some of their congeners, as goldfinches, green- 

 finches, &c. ? Before winter, perhaps, they might be hard- 

 ened, and able to shift for themselves. 



About ten years ago, I used to spend some weeks yearly 

 at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on 

 the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could 

 not help being much amused with those myriads of the 

 swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what 

 struck me most was, that from the time they began to con- 

 gregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 

 every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now 

 this resorting towards that element, at that season of the 

 year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion 

 (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish 

 naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, 

 in his " Calendar of Flora," as familiarly of the swallow's 

 going under water in the beginning of September as he 

 would of his poultry going to roost a little before sunset. 3 



An observing gentleman in London writes me word, that 

 he saw a house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, 

 flying in and out of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, 

 on the twenty-ninth of last October (as I was travelling 

 through Oxford) saw four or five swallows hovering round 

 and settling on the roof of the county hospital. 



Now, is it likely that these poor little birds (which, per- 

 haps, had not been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that 

 late season of the year, and from so midland a county, 



1 Turdus torquatus, Linnaeus. 2 See Letters XIII. and XX. 



3 Stillingfleet's " Calendar of Flora," Swedish and English, made in 

 1755, and published in 1761. ED. 



