44 
NATURAL HISTORY 
Some birds, haunting witli the missel-thrushes, and feed- 
ing on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the 
description of the Merula torquataj^ or ring-ouzel, were 
lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people 
to procure me a specimen, but without success.^ 
Query — Might not canary birds be naturalized to this 
climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into 
the nest of some of their congeners, as goldfinches, green- 
finches, &c. ? Before winter, perhaps, they might be hard- 
ened, and able to shift for themselves. 
About ten years ago, I used to spend some weeks yearly 
at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on 
the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could 
not help being much amused with those myriads of the 
swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what 
struck me most was, that from the time they began to con- 
gregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 
every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now 
this resorting towards that element, at that season of the 
year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion 
(strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish 
naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, 
in his " Calendar of Flora,^^ as familiarly of the swallow's 
going under water in the beginning of September as he 
would of his poultry going to roost a little before sunset.^ 
An observing gentleman in London writes me word, that 
he saw a house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, 
flying in and out of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, 
on the twenty -ninth of last October (as I was travelling 
through Oxford) saw four or five swallows hovering round 
and settling on the roof of the county hospital. 
Now, is it likely that these poor little birds (which, per- 
haps, had not been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that 
late season of the year, and from so midland a county. 
^ Turdus torquafus, Linnaeus. ^ See Letters XIII. and XX. 
3 Stillingfieet's " Calendar of Flora," Swedish and English, made in. 
1755, and published in 1761. — ^Ed. 
