30 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



As to swallows (hirundines rusticce) being found in a torpid 

 state during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this 

 country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. 1 

 But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he 

 was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements 

 of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts 

 (hirundines apodes] among the rubbish, which were at first 

 appearance dead, but on being carried towards the fire revived. 

 He told me, that out of his great care to preserve them, he put 

 them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where 

 they were suffocated. 



Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was 

 a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of 

 the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and 

 that many people found swallows among the rubbish ; but on 

 my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to 

 my no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative; but 

 that others assured him they did. 



Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on 

 July nth, and young martins (hirundines urbiccR) were then 

 fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once, 

 For I see by my fauna of last year, that young broods came 

 forth so late as September i8th. Are not these late hatch- 

 ings more in favour of hiding than migration ? Nay, some 

 young martins remained in their nests last year so late as 

 September 29th; and yet they totally disappeared with us by 

 the 5th October. 



How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the 

 same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before 

 the middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till 

 the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins 

 on the yth November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were 

 flying in sight together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and 

 winter birds ! 



A little yellow bird 2 (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, 

 or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus] still continues to make 

 a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola 



