230 The Natural History of Selborne 



downs are often closely attended by a little party of swallows for 

 miles together, which plays before and behind them, sweeping around 

 them, and collecting all the skulking insects that are roused by the 

 trampling of the horses' feet : when the wind blows hard, without 

 this expedient, they are often forced to settle to pick up their lurking 

 prey. 



This species feeds much on little Coleoptera, as well as on gnats 

 and flies ; and often settles on dug ground, or paths, for gravels to 

 grind and digest its food. Before they depart, for some weeks, to 

 a bird, they forsake houses and chimneys, and roost in trees ; and 

 usually withdraw about the beginning of October, though some 

 few stragglers may appear on at times till the first week in 

 November. 



Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of London next 

 the fields, but do not enter, like the house-martin, the close and 

 crowded parts of the city. 



Both male and female are distinguished from their congeners by 

 the length and forkedness of their tails. 1 They are undoubtedly 

 the most nimble of all the species : and when the male pursues the 

 female in amorous chase, they then go beyond their usual speed and 

 exert a rapidity almost too quick for the eye to follow. 



After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning aropyij 

 of the swallow, I shall add, for your further amusement, an anecdote 

 or two not much in favour of her sagacity: 



A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of 

 a pair of garden-shears that were stuck up against the boards in 

 an out-house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever 

 that implement was wanted ; and, what is stranger still, another 

 bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an 

 owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the 

 rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with 

 eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy the most elegant 

 private museum in Great Britain. The owner, struck with the 



1 The tail, however, is much more forked and much longer in the male than 

 in the female. The difference thus noted is probably ornamental, and is doubtless 

 due to selection of the handsomer partners by the hen birds. ED. 



