LX.] OF SELBORNE. 167 



LETTER LX. 



TO THOMAS PEXNANT, ESQ. 



BEFORE your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been 

 remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female 

 swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; so that there 

 was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli: and 

 besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the 

 employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the 

 sexes, nor the individuals of different chimneys the one for the 

 other. From- all my observations, it constantly appeared that 

 each sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked 

 shape ; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of 

 the male than in that of the female. 



Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are 

 helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a snap- 

 ping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they 

 walk : these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance 



The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of 

 summer. 



Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third. 



Weasels prey on moles, as appears by their being sometimes 

 caught in mole-traps. 



Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old crows' nests, and the; 

 kestril in churches and ruins. 



There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island of 

 Ely. The threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their 

 young : the generation of eels is very dark and mysterious. 



Hen-harriers breed on the 'ground, and seem never to settle 

 on trees. 



[Of this bold bird White afterwards writes in his " Observa- 

 tions :" "A gentleman flushed a pheasant in a wheat stubble, and 

 shot at it ; when, notwithstanding the report of the gun, it was 



