28 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



LETTER X. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



IT has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbour 

 whose studies have led him 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 rusluce) 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 

 seemed, at their 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 Sussex, a great frag- 

 ment 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 

 the eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urbicaf) 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 the eighteenth. Are not these late hatch- 

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

 young martins remained in their nests last year so late as 



