264 NATURAL HISTORY 



year a pair, probably the same pair, built their nest in 

 the conch, and laid their eggs 2 . 



The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque 

 appearance, and are not the least curious specimens in 

 that wonderful collection of art and nature 3 . 



Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its 

 way, an undistinguishing, limited faculty ; and blind to 

 every circumstance that does not immediately respect 

 self-preservation, or lead at once to the propagation or 

 support of their species 4 . 

 I am, 



With all respect, &c. &c. 



* This anecdote is related, almost in the same words, and evidently 

 originally from the same pen, in Barrington's Miscellanies, p. 240. 

 E. T. B. 



The identical specimen is still preserved in the collection of one of my 

 friends. W. Y. 



3 Sir Aston Lever's Museum : [since entirely sold off, and variously 

 distributed.] 



4 Two or three days after the flight of swallows had departed from this 

 country in September, I found a swallow sitting on the gravel walk before 

 the house door. When I had taken it up it sat on my finger, and ap- 

 peared to have been shot in the body near the base of the wing ; it was 

 quite emaciated, and looked most piteously at me, so that in compassion 

 I brought it on my finger into the house, and held it to a pane of the win- 

 dow where there were some flies, which it snapped at and devoured 

 greedily. I then offered it some nightingale's food on the point of a pen, 

 which it ate with equal satisfaction. In pity I found myself compelled 

 to take care of it, and I preserved it through the winter upon moist meat 

 and egg with a mixture of bread crumbs and fig dust, the nightingale's 

 food being too laxative for it. I had hoped that, if it survived, it would 

 recover the power of flight by the spring, when I had intended to give it 

 its liberty, but the injury had been too severe, and it was never able to 

 rise above a foot from the ground. I did not find it suffer from the sus- 

 ceptibility of cold in its feet, which has been mentioned by a gentleman, 

 who stated himself to have been unable to preserve swallows without 

 covering the perches with flannel. It was kept in the same situation as 

 some foreign birds, in a warmly furnished and inhabited room, and seemed 

 quite healthful, though weak from its wound. I observed some peculi- 

 arities in its habits ; that it had no notion of turning its back to the light 

 to spring up on a higher perch ; the consequence of which was, that in a 

 cage with a wooden back or hung against a wall, it would continue 

 always sitting on the lowest perch, which was nearer the light than the 

 upper one. It usually sat at the end of the perch furthest from the light, 



