OF SELBORNE. 136 



LETTER IX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771. 



DEAR SIR, 



You are, 1 know, no great friend to migration ; and the well 

 attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to 

 justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swal- 

 low kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up 

 like insects and bats, in a torpid state, to slumber away the 

 more uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine 

 weather awakens them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general ; 

 because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my 

 brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions 

 of these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks 

 together, both spring and fall : during which periods myriads 

 of the swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, 

 and from south to north, according to the season. And these 

 vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, 

 hoopoes, oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c. and also many 

 of our soft-billed summer-birds of passage ; and moreover of 

 birds which never leave us, such as all the various sorts of 

 hawks and kites. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives 

 a curious account of the incredible armies of hawks and kites 

 which he saw in the spring-time traversing the Thracian Bos- 

 phorus from Asia to Europe. Besides the above mentioned, 

 he remarks that the procession is swelled by whole troops of 

 eagles and vultures. 



Now it is no wonder that birds residing in Africa should 

 retreat before the sun as it advances, and retire to milder re- 

 gions, and especially birds of prey, whose blood being heated 

 with hot animal food, are more impatient of a sultry climate : 

 but then I cannot help wondering why kites and hawks, and 



