OF SELBORNE. 305 
LETTER LIII. 
A Rake, and, I think, a new little bird frequents 
my garden, which I have great reason to think is 
the pettichaps : it is common in some parts of the 
kingdom, and I have received formerly several 
dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much 
resembles the whitethroat, but has a more white, 
or, rather, silvery breast and belly ; is restless and 
active like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough 
to bough, examining every part for food; it also 
runs up the stems of the crown imperials, and, put- 
ting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the 
liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. 
Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge. 
sparrow, by hopping about on the grassplats and 
mown walks. 
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and ob- 
serving man, informs me that, in the beginning of 
May, and about ten minutes before eight o’clock in 
the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house- 
swallows, thirty at least, he supposes, perching on 
a willow that hung over the verge of James Knight’s 
upper pond. His attention was drawn by the twit. 
tering of these birds, which sat motionless in a 
row on the bough, with their heads all one way, 
and by their weight pressing down the twig so that 
it nearly touched the water. In this situation he 
watched them till he could see no longer. Re- 
peated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce 
us greatly to suspect that house-swallows have 
some strong attachment to water, independent of 
the matter of food; and, though they may not re- 
Cc2 
