SWIFTS. 205 



and decent reserve more may be said than xian with truth of 

 every individual of her sex ; since she is 



" quae nee reticere loquenti, 



Nee prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo."* 



I am, &c. 



P.S. The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following 

 lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically 

 accounting for their causes from popular superstition : 



" Quae bend quom videas, rationem reddere possis 

 Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola 

 Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, 

 Palanteis coraites quom monteis inter opacos 

 Quaerimus, et magna disperses voce ciemus. 

 Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces 

 Unam quom jaceres ; ita colles collibus ipsis 

 Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. 

 Haec loca apripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere 

 Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur ; 

 Quorum noctiv ago strepitu, ludoquejocanti 

 Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, 

 Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, 

 Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum ; 

 Et genus agricolum lat sentiscere, quom Pan 

 Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans, 

 Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, 

 Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam." 



LUCRETIUS, Lib. iv. 1. 576. 



LETTER XXXIX. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON, 

 DEAR SIR, Selborne, May 13, 1778. 



AMONG the many singularities attending 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 enquiry 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 possible to recount them ; while 

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

 quently 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 



* One of the finest echoes I ever remember to have heard was at sea, near the town of St. 

 Pierre, in Guernsey. The reverberation of the report of the evening gun from rock to rock wa 

 grand in the extreme, and after dying away, as might be imagined, was again repeated from 

 some rocks at a distance, with the same thundering continuous roll that was heard before. ED. 



