L.] OF SELBORNE. J35 
of the hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak 
hirdS; some of which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift their 
quarters at this late season of the year to the other side of the 
northern tropic ? Or rather, is it not more probable that the 
next church, rnin, chalk-cliff, steep covert, or perhaps sand- 
bank, lake, or pool, 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 con- 
tinent 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 dis- 
regard that they show for men or guns, that they have been 
little accustomed to places of much resort. Navigators mention 
that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate 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 towni in the autuinn that he killed 
sixteen himself in one afternoon : he added further, 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 little 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. 
Selborne, March 15, 1773. 
