SWALLOW. 147 
says, I have always remarked that in particular seasons, birds 
are more prone to assume variety in the colour of their 
plumage, than in others. 
While staying last summer, 1851, with my sincerely valued 
friend and old schoolfellow, the Rev. Henry Hilton, Rector 
of Milsted, near Sittingbourne, Kent, I noticed, in the course 
of a walk by Torry Hill, the seat of Mr. Pemberton Leigh, 
a white bird on the wing, which I at first took to be a 
Starling, but which proved to be a young Swallow. After 
two or three unsuccessful flying shots with an ancient ‘piece,’ 
which might be supposed to be from the same armoury as 
that from which Robinson Crusoe was supplied, it at last fell 
from a rail where I aimed at it sitting. I had _ previously 
been informed of a brood of White Swallows at this place, 
and having applied to Mr. Chaffey, of Dodington, near 
Sittingbourne, for a chronicle of the facts, he obliged me with 
the following statement:—‘In 1849, a pair of Swallows built 
a nest, and hatched their young in a bakehouse attached to 
a farm-house, in the parish of Frinsted, in the occupation of 
a Mr. Filmer. Out of the number of young ones there was 
a milk-white one, which was shot some time after they had 
flown, and is now in my collection. In the following year, 
1850, a pair, most likely the same, built another nest in the 
same place, and hatched two white ones, one of which was 
sent to me; what became of the other I never heard. This 
year, 1851, a pair again built their nest in the same place, 
and hatched two white ones, the fate of one of which you, 
sir, are acquainted with. They had ingress and egress through 
a broken pane of glass. The bakehouse was constantly used 
for baking and other purposes, of which the old birds took 
little or no notice.’ 
