You must have
made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a good fund of
materials for a future edition of the British Zoology; and will have
no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part
of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before.
It has always been matter of wonder to me that field-fares, which
are so congenerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose
to breed in England: but that they should not think even the
highlands cold and northerly, and sequestered enough, is a
circumstance still more strange and wonderful.. The ring-ousel,
you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round; so that we have
reason to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short
space every autumn do not come from thence.
And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that those
birds were most punctual again in their migration this autumn,
appearing, as before, about the 30th of September: but their flocks
were larger than common, and their stay protracted somewhat
beyond the usual time.
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