260 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 1774 



If you will object to the rest of my monographies where 

 you see occasion, I shall be glad. 



My neighbour Mr. Robertson is disposed, and thinks he 

 shall be able to take my curacy in the autumn ; when I 

 much wish to see Lancashire : but then it must not be 

 'til the beginning of November, for I must be at Oxford 

 in October, and I am embarrassed with a broken tenant 

 at Greatham, by whom I shall lose a year's rent if I do 

 not look about me at Michaelmas. 



Swifts breed but once in a summer, and but tvjo at a 

 time; swallows and martins breed twice in a season, and 

 hoTdfouT to six at a time ; so that the latter encrease at an 

 average five times as fast as the former. 



With respects to my sister I remain 



Your affect, brother, GiL. White. 



To the Rev. John Wliite. Selborne, Aug. 11, 1774. 



Dear Brother, — My best thanks are due for your strictures 

 on my monographies, of which I shall avail myself in many 

 particulars, and hope you will extend them to the swift. 

 But I am greatly disappointed with respect to Mr. L[ever] 

 from whom, as a good practical ornithologist, I expected 

 several new remarks and observations, but I don't find that 

 he sent you one. Surely that gentleman's scheme with 

 regard to his museum is a strange one; for as I cannot 

 suppose that a man of his spirit will take money, so, if he 

 entertains that great beast of a town for nothing (gratis), it 

 will cost him thousands and be quite a ruinous expence! 

 Swifts may breed twice at Gibraltar, as far as I know, 

 because they arrive there much earlier than with us. But 

 it is past all doubt that with us the case is quite different ; 

 for they do not arrive 'till the first week in May, do not 

 hatch 'til the middle of June, and this year and the last 

 departed by the seventh of August. Down at Fyfield I 

 opened the eaves of some roofs on June 30, and found squab 



