OF SELBORNE. 99 



by worms and insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, 

 fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in long and tedious 

 voyages. It is from this defect of food that our collections 

 (curious as they are) are defective, and we are deprived of 

 some of the most delicate and lovely genera. l 



LETTER XXXI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



SELBORNE, Sept. 14, 1770. 



OU saw, I find, the ring-ousels again among 

 their native crags ; and are farther assured 

 that they continue resident in those cold 

 regions the whole year. 2 From whence 

 then do our ring-ousels migrate so regu- 

 larly every September, and make their appearance again, 

 as if in their return, every April ? They are more early 

 this year than common, for some were seen at the usual hill 

 on the fourth of this month. 



An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they 

 frequent some parts of Dartmoor, and breed there ; but leave 

 those haunts about the end of September or beginning of 

 October, and return again about the end of March. 



1 Since the foregoing remarks were penned, not only have the means 

 of transport become much more rapid than was the case in W T hite's 

 day, but greater attention having been paid to the importation of foreign 

 birds and animals, and more consideration given to their food, enter- 

 prising individuals have succeeded in bringing alive and well to this 

 country many more delicate species than those referred to by our 

 author, and from much greater distances. If he regretted the inability 

 in 1770 to procure a soft-billed bird from the coast of Guinea, how would 

 he have marvelled to see alive in the Zoological Society's Gardens at 

 the present day the insectivorous Australian Pied Grallina, Grallina 

 australis, the Black-tailed Flower-bird, Anthornis melanura, from New 

 Zealand, and the Wood swallow, Artamus super ciliosus, from New South 

 Wales. ED. 



2 From our present knowledge of the habits of the ring-ousel, we 

 may infer with little doubt that Pennant's informant must have con- 

 founded the dipper or water- ousel with the ring-ousel. ED. 



