73 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



mas Day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning ; at first 

 there was a vast fog ; but, by the time that I was got seven or 

 eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into 

 a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, 

 and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great 

 numbers of swallows (hirundines rusticcz) clustering on the stunted 

 shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As 

 soon as the air became clear and pleasant they were all on the 

 wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on 

 southward towards the sea ; after this I did not see any more 

 flocks, only now and then a straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow 

 kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the 

 bulk of them seem to withdraw at once; only some stragglers 

 stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest 

 reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay them- 

 selves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually 

 of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For 

 a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking 

 with some friends under Merton Wall on a remarkably hot noon, 

 either in the last week in December or the first week in January, 

 he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding 

 of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently re- 

 marked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere ; 

 is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many 

 waters round it, or to what else ? 



When I used to rise in the morning last autumn, and see the 

 swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of 

 the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with 

 a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification ; with 

 delight, to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those 

 poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration, or 

 hiding, imprinted on their minds by their great Creator ; and 

 with some degree of mortification, when I reflected that, after all 

 our pains and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain to what 

 regions they do migrate ; and are still farther embarrassed to find 

 that some do not actually migrate at all. 



