LXXXI.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



223 



Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I 

 have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that 

 strange avriaropyr/, or antipathy, which immediately succeeds in 

 the feathered kind to the most passionate fondness, is the occa- 

 sion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. 

 Without this provision one favourite district would be crowded 

 with inhabitants, while others would be destitute and forsaken. 

 But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and 

 to oblige the young to seek for new abodes : and the rivalry of 

 the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on 

 the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in 

 the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons 

 given above : but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in 

 my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner 

 of proportion to the numbers retiring. 



SELBORNE, May 13, 1778. 



liltEENFINCH'S EG(i. 



