198 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



house-martins retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October ; 

 so that a person not very observant of such matters would con- 

 clude that they had taken their last farewell : but then it may 

 be seen in my diaries also that considerable flocks have disco- 

 vered themselves again in the first week of November, and often 

 on the fourth day of that month only for one day ; and that not 

 as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at their 

 leisure and feeding calmly, as if no enterprize of moment at all 

 agitated their spirits. And this was the case in the beginning 

 of this very month ; for, on the fourth of November, more than 

 twenty house-martins, which, in appearance, had all departed 

 about the seventh of October, were seen again, for that one morn- 

 ing only, sporting between my fields and the Hanger, and feast- 

 ing on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district. The 

 preceding day was wet and blustering, but the fourth was dark 

 and mild, and soft, the wind at south-west, and the thermometer 

 at 58 1 ; a pitch not common at that season of the year. More- 

 over, it may not be amiss to add in this place, that whenever 

 the thermometer is above 50 the bat comes flitting out in every 

 autumnal and winter-month. 



From all these circumstances laid together, it is obvious that 

 torpid insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their 

 profoundest slumbers by a little untimely warmth ; and there- 

 fore that nothing so much promotes this death-like stupor as a 

 defect of heat. And further, it is reasonable to suppose that 

 two whole species, or at least many individuals of those two 

 species, of British hirundines, do never leave this island at aD, 

 but partake of the same benumbed state : for we cannot suppose 

 that, after a month's absence, house-martins can return from 

 southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that 

 house-swallows should leave the districts of Africa to enjoy, in 

 March, the transient summer of a couple of days.* 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXXVII. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



DEAR SIR, Selborne, Jan. 8, 1778. 



THERE was in this village several years ago a miserable pauper, 



* The former had of course arrived from some more northern part of the kingdom, and the 

 latter had in all likelihood (.Tossed the ocean with the same southerly hreezes which had brought 

 the summer weather As in all probability these last were not Selborne birds, they most likely 

 continued their course to the homes they had left the previous autumn. ED. 



