The Natural History of Selborne 227 



day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often 

 happened early in February. 



It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes 

 and mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, that if these early 

 visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two 

 dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for 

 a time. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than 

 migration ; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire 

 to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only 

 to warmer latitudes. 1 



The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means 

 builds altogther in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses 

 against the rafters ; and so she did in Virgil's time : 



.... "Ante 



Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo." 



In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the barn- 

 swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no 

 chimneys to houses, except they are English-built : in these countries 

 she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and 

 open halls. 2 



Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place ; as 

 we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, 

 through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose 

 of manure : but in general with us this hirundo breeds in chimneys ; 

 and loves to haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire, no 

 doubt for the sake of warmth. Not that it can subsist in the 

 immediate shaft where there is a fire ; but prefers one adjoining to 

 that of the kitchen, and disregards the perpetual smoke of that 

 funnel, as I have often observed with some degree of wonder. 



1 Once more the same old pitfall. It is most likely that the birds in these 

 cases were killed by the cold. ED. 2 It is a curious fact that at the present 

 day all the places in which the chimney-swallow builds are of artificial human 

 origin. Hence it seems probable that before the epoch of house-building, the 

 swallow must have bred only in caverns or on accidental cliffs. The enormous 

 growth of human building must, therefore, have admitted of an immense extension 

 of the swallow species. ED. 



