26 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



made but slender progress in a kind of information to 

 which I have been attached from my childhood. 



As to swallows (hirundines rusticae] being found in a 

 torpid state during the winter in the isle of Wight, or any 

 part of this country, I never heard any such account worth 

 attending to. 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 (hirundines apodes} 

 among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead, 

 but, on being carried toward 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. 



Another intelligent person has informed me that, while 

 he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, 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 1 1 th, and young martins (hirundines urbicae] were 

 then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again 

 once. For I see by my fauna of last year, that young 

 broods come forth so late as September the eighteenth. 

 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 twenty-ninth ; and 

 yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October. 



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

 exactly the same life with the swallow and house-martin, 

 should leave us before the middle of August invariably ! 

 while the latter stay often till the middle of October ; and 

 once I saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of 

 November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were 

 flying in sight together ; an uncommon assemblage of 

 summer and winter-birds. 



