122 NATURAL HISTORY 



especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt 

 cold mountainous countries : but I have 

 good reason to suspect since, that they may 

 come to us from the westward ; because I 

 hear from very good authority, that they 

 breed on Dartmoor : and that they forsake 

 that wild district about the time that our 

 visitors appear, and do not return till late 

 in the Spring. 



I have taken a great deal of pains about 

 your salicaria and mine, with a white stroke 

 over its eye and a tawny rump. I have 

 surveyed it alive and dead, and have pro- 

 cured several specimens ; and am perfectly 

 persuaded myself (and trust you will soon 

 be convinced of the same) that it is no more 

 nor less than the passer arundinaceus minor 

 of This bird, by some means or 



other, seems to be entirely omitted in the 

 British Zoology ; and one reason probably 

 was ; because it is so strangely classed in 

 Ray^ who ranges it among his picis affines. 

 It ought no doubt to have gone among his 

 amculce caudd unicolore, and among your 

 slender-billed small birds of the same divi- 



