NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 165 



LETTER XVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Jan. zgth, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is un- 

 doubtedly the first comer of all the British hirundines ; and appears 

 in general on or about the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked 

 from many years observation.* Not but now and then a straggler 

 is seen much earlier : and, in particular, when I was a boy I ob- 

 served a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove 

 Tuesday ; which day could not fall out later than the middle of 

 March, and often happened early in February. 



It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes 

 and mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, that if these early 

 visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two 

 dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for 

 a time. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than 

 migration ; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire 

 to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two to 

 wanner latitudes. 



The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means 

 builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out- 

 houses against the rafters ; and so she did in Virgil's time : 



. . . . "An-e 



Garrula qua;n tignis nidos suspendat hirundo." 



In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu sivala, the 

 barn swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are 

 no chimneys to houses, except they are English-built: in these 

 countries she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and 

 galleries, and open halls. 



Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place ; as 

 we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, 

 through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose 



* Hirundo fiparia. or bank-swallow, we have for many years observed to precede the 

 chimney-swallow by from seven to ten days. The breeding-places of the chimney-swallow 

 mentioned afterwards are all artificial, and of these the rafters of outhouses are the most 

 frequent. We are not acquainted with any natural breeding-place of this species, it is 

 most probably in caverns or cleft rocks. 



