44 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 (liirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which 

 were at first appearance dead, but on being carried towards 

 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. 1 



Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he 

 was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone [Brighton], in Sussex, a 

 great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter 

 on the beach, and that many people found swallows among 

 the rubbish ; but on my questioning him whether he saw any 

 of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he 

 answered me in the negative; but that others assured him 

 they did. 



Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July 

 the nth, and young martins (hirundines urbicce) were then 

 fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once. 

 For I see by my fauna of last year, that young broods came 

 forth so late as September the i8th. Are not these late 

 hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration ? Nay, 

 some young martins remained in their nests last year so late 

 as September the agth; and yet they totally disappeared with 

 us by the 5th of October. 



How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly 

 the same life with the swallow and house- mar tin, should leave 

 us before the middle of August invariably ! while the latter 

 stay often till the middle of October; and once I saw 



1 This question whether swallows and their like were to be found hiber- 

 nating in England seems to be the one about which Pennant first put him- 

 self in communication with the Selborne naturalist. It was commonly 

 believed at the time that swallows were often found torpid in England, and 

 even that they passed the winter under water in the mud of ponds. It is 

 now known, of course, that such stories are quite untrue, and that swallows 

 and swifts migrate southward in winter. The swift, again, is not related to 

 the swallow, but is a Cypselus, belonging to an entirely different family. 

 But White could never quite get over the belief in hibernation, a point to 

 which he recurs again and again throughout these letters. ED. 



