64 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 
1767. Last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, 
twenty or thirty, of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens : 
and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed 
these birds last spring, about Lady-day, as it were, on their 
return to the north. If these birds should prove the ousels of 
the north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within 
our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear 
whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the 
south ; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one 
cannot suppose that they would have continued so long un- 
noticed in the southern counties. Tlie ousel is larger than a 
sandpiper's egg. butcher bird's PJHi. 
blackbird, and feeds on haws ; but last autumn (when there 
were no haws) it fed on yew-berries ; in the spring it feeds on 
ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and 
April. 
I must not omit to tell you (as you have been lately on the 
study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of late, 
dra<w up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 63 feet 
deep, a large black warty lizard, with a fin-tail and yellow belly. 
How they first came down at that depth, and how they were 
ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am 
able to say. 
My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the 
examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach 
at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions ; and 
I hope Mr. Hunt may find reason to give his decision in my 
favour ; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary 
