NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. -29 



during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this country, 

 I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergy- 

 man, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great 

 boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church 

 tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines 

 apodes) among the rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, 

 but on being carried towards the fire revived. He told me, that 

 out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, 

 and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated. 



Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a 

 schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the 

 chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many 

 people found swallows among the rubbish ; but on my questioning 

 him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small dis- 

 appointment, he answered me in the negative ; but that others 

 assured him they did. 



Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the 

 nth, and young martins (hirundines urbic<z} were then fledged in 

 their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my 

 fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as Septem- 

 ber the 1 8th. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding 

 than migration ? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests 

 last year so late as September the 2Qth ; and yet they totally dis- 

 appeared with us by the 5th of October. 



How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the 

 same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before 

 the middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till the 

 middle of October ; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on 

 the 7th of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were 

 flying in sight together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and 

 winter birds ! 



A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, 

 or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make 

 a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.* The stoparola 

 of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called 

 in your zoology the fly-catcher, f There is one circumstance cha- 

 racteristic of this bird which seems to have escaped observation, 

 and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from 



* The wood-wren or warbler, yellow-willow wren, of British authors, Sylvia sibilatrix, 



' the peculiar note al 

 icapa grisola, Linn. 



j. nt wuuu-vvicn ui wtiiuici, ycuuw-wiiiuvv wren, ui 



Latham, frequents old woods, and is easily known by the peculiar note alluded to. 

 t The spotted fly-catcher of British authors, Muscu 



