J'uoaiiow 



LETTER XVIII. 



1*0 the same. 



SELBORNE, Jan. ^yk, 1774. 



EAR SIR, The house-swallow, or chimney- 

 swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer of all the 

 British hirundines ; and appears in general on or 

 about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked 

 from many years' observation. 1 Not but now and 

 then a straggler is seen much earlier ; and, in 

 particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow 

 for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday ; which 



1 Later observers are almost unanimous in noting that the sand-martin 

 precedes the chimney-swallow by from seven to eleven days. This is also my 

 own experience. On Hind Head, sand-martins flit round the houses, catching 

 flies, till the house-martins return to their nests ; but after the house-martins have 

 arrived, the sand-martins abandon the neighbourhood of the houses, and hawk 

 only on the open moors. ED. 



