The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were some RINGOUSELS (turdi torquati).

This week twelvemonth, a gentleman from Lon. don, being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries, some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white round their, necks: a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed the same; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767 (you, how. ever, paid but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these birds myself); but 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 again last spring, about Lady Day, as it were, on their return to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe, and may retire before the exces. sive rigour of the frosts in those parts, and return to lay their eggs in spring, when the cold abates. If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, concerning whose migrations the writers are silent; but 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 unnoticed in the southern coun

ties. The ousel is larger than a 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 so lately on the study of reptiles) that my people every now and then, of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is sixty-three 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. may find reason to give his decision in my favour; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation.

As yet I am not quite done with my history of the ædicnemus, or stone curlew; for I shall desire

a gentleman in Sussex (near whose house these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn) to observe nicely when they leave him (if they do leave him), and when they return again in the spring I was with this gentleman lately, and saw several single birds.

LETTER XXI.

Selborne, Nov. 28, 1768. DEAR SIR, WITH regard to the ædicnemus, or stone curlew, I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound; and shall urge him to take particular notice when they begin to congregate, and afterward to watch them most narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of the winter. When I have obtained information with respect to this circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the stone curlew, which I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these birds; and, besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you.

And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it, an anecdote which the

above-mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at his house; which was, that in a warren joining to his outlet, many Daws (corvi monidula)

build every year

every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and if they heard the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz., the puffins) place their nests, I know, in this manner; but I should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground.

Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to build in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposite their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity, which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place.

One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 26th, saw a martin in a sheltered bottom; the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter.

You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution concerning the cures done by toads; for, let people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion.

Your approbation with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ringousel gives me satisfaction; and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ringousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most is the very short stay they make with us, for in about three weeks they are all gone. I shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in the spring, as they did last year.

I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had settled me near the seaside or near some great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted with their productions; but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce.