ON BIRDS. 361 



autumn and spring months, when the thermometer is 

 at 50, because then phalante and moths are stirring* 

 These swallows looked like young ones. WHITE. 



Of their migration, the proofs are such as will 

 scarcely admit of a doubt. Sir Charles Wager and 

 Captain Wright saw vast flocks of them at sea, when 

 on their passage from one country to another. Our 

 author, Mr. White, saw what he deemed the actual 

 migration of these birds, and which he has described 

 at p. 78 of his History of Selborne ; and of their 

 congregating together on the roofs of churches and 

 other buildings, and on trees, previous to their de- 

 parture, many instances occur; particularly, I once 

 observed a large flock of house-martins on the roof 

 of the church here at Catsfield, which acted exactly 

 in the manner here described by Mr. White, some- 



" Nam cum vere novo, tellus se dura relaxat, 

 Culminibusque cavis, blandum strepit ales hirundo 

 Gens devota chores agitat !'' 



When the hard earth grows soft in early spring, 

 And on our roofs the noisy swallows sing. 



From a passage in the Birds of Aristophanes, we learn, that 

 among the Greeks, the crane pointed out the time of sowing ; 

 the arrival of the kite, the time of sheep-shearing ; and the 

 swallow the time to put on summer clothes. According to the 

 Greek Calendar of Flora, kept by Theophrastus at Athens, the 

 Ornithian winds blow, and the swallow comes, between the 28th 

 of February and the 12th of March; the kite and nightingale 

 appear between the llth and 26th of March; the cuckoo appears 

 at the same time the young figs come out; thence his name. See 

 Stillingfleet's Tracts on Natural History, p. 324. 



Mr. White says, p. 148, it is strange that rooks and starlings 

 accompany each other : but this is the case with other birds ; the 

 short-eared owl often accompanies flights of woodcocks in this 

 country. See Pennant's Scotland, i. p. 11. In Greece, the 

 cuckoo migrates with the turtle flocks, thence they call him tri- 

 gonokractes, or turtle leader. MITFORD. 



