98 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



a more northern naturalist would say), 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 migrations 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 men- 

 tion that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such deso- 

 late districts, birds are so little acquainted with the human 

 form that they settle on men's shoulders ; 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 tovm in the autumn that he 

 killed sixteen himself in one afternoon : he added farther, 

 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 httle parties in the autumn cantoned all 

 along the Sussex-downs, wherever there were shrubs and 

 bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particularly in the 

 autumn of 1770. 



I am, etc. 



