The Natural History of Selborne 217 



in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure 

 from the injuries of weather. The shell or crust of the nest is a sort 

 of rustic-work full of knobs and protuberances on the outside ; nor 

 is the inside of those that 1 have examined smoothed with any exact- 

 ness at all ; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, 

 by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a 

 bed of moss interwoven with wool. In this nest they tread, or 

 engender, frequently during the time of building ; and the hen lays 

 from three to five white eggs. 



At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and help- 

 less condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what 

 comes away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate 

 cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in 

 so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the 

 quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of; par- 

 ticularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what 

 proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a par- 

 ticular provision, that the dung of nestlings is enveloped in a tough 

 kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed off without soiling 

 or daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the young 

 perform this office for themselves in a little time by thrusting their 

 tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds 

 presently arrive at their qXcicca, or full growth, they soon become 

 impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out at the 

 orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with 

 food from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the 

 wing by their parents ; but the feat is done by so quick and almost 

 imperceptible a flight that a person must have attended very exactly 

 to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as 

 the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately 

 turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood ; while the 

 first flight, shaken ofF and rejected by their nurses, congregate in 

 great flocks, and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering 

 on sunny mornings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on 

 the roofs of churches and houses. These congregatings usually begin 

 to take place about the first week in August ; and therefore we may 



