OF SELBORNE. 177 



In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing 

 and feeding over the river just below the bridge : others haunt 

 some of the churches of the Borough next the fields ; but do 

 not venture, like the house-martin, into the close crowded part 

 of the town. 



The Sivedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this 

 swallow, calling it ring swala, from the perpetual rings or 

 circles that it takes round the scene of it's nidification. 



Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles with hard cases 

 over their wings, as well as on the softer insects ; but it does 

 not appear how they can procure gravel to grind their food, 

 as swallows do, since they never settle on the ground. Young 

 ones, over-run with hippoboscce, are sometimes found, under 

 their nests, fallen to the ground : the number of vermin ren- 

 dering their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent 

 in this village several abject cottages : yet a succession still 

 haunts the same unlikely roofs : a good proof this that the 

 same birds return to the same spots. As they must stoop 

 very low to get up under these humble eaves, cats lie in wait, 

 and sometimes catch them on the wing. 



On the fifth of July, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof 

 over the nest of a swift. The dam sat in the nest ; but so 

 strongly was she affected by natural crropyTj for her brood, 

 which she supposed to be in danger, that, regardless of her 

 own safety, she would not stir, but lay sullenly by them, per- 

 mitting herself to be taken in hand. The squab young we 

 brought down and placed on the grass-plot, where they 

 tumbled about, and were as helpless as a new-born child. 

 While we contemplated their naked bodies, their unwieldy 

 disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for their 

 necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected 



and swallows generically distinct, but they are now by all the best syste- 

 matic ornithologists placed in distinct orders. The structural affinity of 

 the swifts to the humming-birds is clearly established, and will be found 

 fully demonstrated by Professor Newton in his edition of Yarrell. The 

 Alpine swift, C. melba, is repeatedly alluded to under the name Hirundo 

 melba in Gilbert White's correspondence with his brother John. (See 

 letters in the Appendix). T. B.J 



R 



