NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 169 



years together in the same nest, where it happens to be well 

 sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shell or 

 crust of the nest is a sort of rustic work, full of knobs and protu- 

 berances on the outside nor is the inside of those that I have 

 examined smoothed with any exactness at all ; but is rendered soft 

 and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small straws, 

 grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven 

 with wool. In this nest they tread, or engender, frequently during 

 the time of building ; and the hen lays from three to five white eggs. 

 At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and 

 helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry 

 out what comes away from their young. Was it not for this affec- 

 tionate cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and 

 destroyed in so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic ex- 

 crement. In the quadruped creation the same neat precaution is 

 made use of; particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams 

 lick away what proceeds from their young. But in birds there 

 seems to be a particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is 

 enveloped in a tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier con- 

 veyed off without soiling or daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in 

 all her ways, the young perform this office for themselves in a little 

 time by thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As 

 the young of small birds presently arrive at their ^AiKia, or full 

 growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all 

 day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging 

 to the nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a 

 time the young are fed on the wing by their parents ; but the feat 

 is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a flight that a per- 

 son must have attended very exactly to their motions before he 

 would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to 

 shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to 

 the business of a second brood ; while the first flight, shaken off 

 and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are 

 the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings 

 and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of 

 churches and houses. These congregatings usually begin to take 

 place about the first week in August ; and therefore we may con- 



