OF SELBORNE. 
H5 
LETTER XXXVIII. 
10 THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE* 
Selbobne, March 15, 1773. 
Y my journal for last autumn it appears that 
the house martins bred verj late, and stayed 
very late in these parts; for on the 1st of Octo- 
ber, I saw young martins in their nest nearly 
fledged ; and again, on the 21st of October, we 
had, at the next house, a nest full of young martins just ready 
to fly ; and the old ones were hawking for insects with great 
alertness. The next morning the brood forsook their nest, 
and were flying round the village. From this day I never saw 
one of the swallow kind till JSTovember the 3rd ; when twenty, 
or perhaps thirty, house martins were playing all day long 
by the side of the hanging wood, and over my fields. Did 
these small weak birds, 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, ruin, chalk cliff, 
steep covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more 
northern naturalist would say) , may become their hyber- 
naculum, 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 country. 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 mention, that, in the 
Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds 
