44 The Natural History of Selborne 



I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergy- 

 man, 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 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 frag- 

 ment 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 i ith, and young martins (hirundines urbicx) 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 1 8th. 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 2gth ; and yet they totally dis- 

 appeared 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-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 yth of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were 



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

 in England seems to be the one about which Pennant first put himself in com- 

 munication 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. 

 Eu. 



