NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 57 



got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun 

 broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large 

 heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to 

 break away, great numbers of swallows (Jiirundines rusticce) 

 clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had 

 roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear and 

 pleasant they were all on the wing at once ; and, by a placid 

 and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea ; 

 after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a 

 straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swal- 

 low kind disappear some and some, gradually, as they come, 

 for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once ; only some 

 stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the 

 greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem 

 to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as 

 bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disap- 

 peared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured 

 me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton 

 Wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in 

 December or the first week in January, he espied three or 

 four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of 

 the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that 

 swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere ; is it owing 

 to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters 

 round it, or to what else ? 



When I used to rise in the morning last autumn, and see 

 the swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and 

 thatch of the neighboring cottages, I could not help being 

 touched with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mor- 

 tification ; with delight, to observe with how much ardor and 

 punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse 

 towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on their minds by 

 their great Creator ; and with some degree of mortification, 

 when I reflected that, after all our pains and inquiries, we are 

 yet not quite certain to what regions they do migrate ; and are 

 still farther embarrassed to find that some do not actually mi- 

 grate at all. 



These reflections made so strong an impression on my im- 



