OF SELBORNE. 221 
to be in danger, that, regardless of her own safety, 
she would not stir, but lay sullenly by them, per- 
mitting herself to be taken in hand. The squab 
young we brought down and placed on the grass. 
plot, where they tumbled about, and were as help- 
less as a newborn child. While we contemplated 
their naked bodies, their unwieldy, disproportioned 
abdomina, and their heads too heavy for their necks 
to support, we could not but wonder when we re- 
flected that these shiftless beings, in a little more 
than a fortnight, would be able to dash through the 
air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a 
meteor, and perhaps, in their emigration, must trav- 
erse vast continents and oceans as distant as the 
equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds 
to their 7AcKia, or state of perfection, while the pro- 
gressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is 
slow and tedious! 
LETTER XXII. 
Selborne, Sept., 1774. 
Dear Sir,—By means ofa straight cottage chim. 
ney, I had an opportunity this summer of remark. 
ing at my leisure how swallows ascend and descend 
through the shaft; but my pleasure in contempla- 
ting the address with which this feat was performed 
to a considerable depth in the chimney was some. 
what interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes 
might undergo the same fate with those of 'Tobit.* 
Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to 
* Tobit, ii., 10. 
T 2 
