SWALLOWS. 39 



LETTER X. 



TO THE SAME. 



i 



August 4, 1767. 



IT has been my misfortune never to have had any 

 neighbours whose studies have led them towards the 

 pursuit of natural knowledge ; so that, for want of 

 a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen 

 my attention, I have made but slender progress in a 

 kind of information to which I have been attached 

 from my childhood. 



As to swallows (hirundines rustics) 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. 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 toward 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 Sus- 

 sex, 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 



