OF SELBORNE. 27 



LETTER X.* 



TO THE SAME. 



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 (Jiirundines rusticce) 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 



* [The original of tliis letter, the first ever written to Pennant by Gil- 

 bert White, commences with the following passage, omitted in the copy 

 as sent to the printer : 



" Nothing but the obliging notice which you were so kind as to take of 

 my trifling observations in the natural way when I was in town in the 

 spring, and your repeated mention of me in some late letters to my brother, 

 could have emboldened me to enter into a correspondence with you, in 

 which, though my vanity cannot suggest to me that I shall send any 

 information worthy your attention, yet the communication of my thoughts 

 to a gentleman so distinguished for these kinds of studies will unavoid- 

 ably be attended with satisfaction and improvement on my side." At 

 this time so little was he acquainted with Pennant, that he did not know 



his Christian name, and the letter is addressed " To Pennant, Esq., 



at Downing, in Flintshire, North Wales." T. B.] 



