NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 165 
Ce 
Rie eee a ee 
TO THE SAME. 
SELBORNE, Yan. 29th, 1774. 
DEAR SIR,—The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is un- 
doubtedly the first comer of all the British hirundines ; and appears 
in general on or about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked 
from many years observation.* Not but now and then a straggler 
is seen much earlier: and, in particular, when I was a boy I ob- 
served a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove 
Tuesday ; which day could not fall out later than the middle of 
March, and often happened early in February. 
It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes 
and mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, that if these early 
visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two 
dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for 
atime. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than 
migration ; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire 
to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two to 
warmer latitudes. 
The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means 
builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out- 
houses against the rafters ; and so she did in Virgil’s time: 
an ERAS ean 
Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo.”’ 
In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called /adu swala, the 
barn swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are 
no chimneys to houses, except they are English-built: in these 
countries she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and 
galleries, and open halls. 
Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place; as 
we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, 
through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose 
* Hirundo riparia, or bank-swallow, we have for many years observed to precede the 
chimney-swallow by from seven to ten days. The breeding-places of the chimney-swallow 
mentioned afterwards are all artificial, and of these the rafters of outhouses are the most 
frequent. We are not acquainted with any natural breeding-place of this species, it 1s 
most probably in caverns or cleft rocks. 
