





LETTER XXXIX. 



SELBORNE, .M^ry 13^, 1778. 



EAR SIR, Among the many singularities attend- 

 ing those amusing birds the swifts, I am now 

 confirmed in the opinion that we have every year 

 the same number of pairs invariably ; at least the 

 result of my inquiry has been exactly the same 

 for a long time past. The swallows and martins 

 are so numerous, and so widely distributed over 

 the village, that it is hardly possibly to recount them ; while the 

 swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so frequently 

 haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily 

 enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs ; 

 about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some 

 of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight 



