LETTER IX. 





To the same. 



FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. \2th, 1772. 

 EAR SIR, You are, I 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 swallow kind do not leave us in 

 the winter, but lay themselves up like insects 

 and bats, in a torpid state, and slumber 

 away the more uncomfortable months till the return of the 

 sun and fine weather awakens them. 1 



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

 because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as 



J This letter is in answer to an essay of Harrington's, published in his 

 "Miscellanies," p. 174, "On the Periodical Appearing and Disappearing 

 of-Certain Birds at Different Times of the Year." In that paper Barring- 

 ton argues against the probability of periodical migration ; and White here 

 meets many of his rather fanciful difficulties and objections. ED. 



