212 NA TURA L HIST OR Y OF 'SEL B ORNE. 



LETTER XXXVI.* 



% 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Nov. zznd, 1777. 



DEAR SIR, You cannot but remember that the 26th and 27th 

 of last March were very hot days, so sultry that everybody com- 

 plained and were restless under those sensations to which they had 

 not been reconciled by gradual approaches. 



This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer 

 coincidences ; for on those two days the thermometer rose to 

 sixty-six in the shade ; many species of insects revived and came 

 forth ; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood ; the old 

 tortoise, near Lewes, in Sussex, awakened and came forth out of 

 its dormitory ; and, what is most to my present purpose, many 

 house-swallows appeared and were very alert in many places, and 

 particularly at Chobham, in Surrey. 



But as that short warm period was succeeded as well as preceded 

 by harsh severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting 

 winds, the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the 

 ground, and the swallows were seen no more until the loth of 

 April, when, the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began 

 to prevail. 



Again ; it appears by my journals for many years past that 

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

 so that a person not very observant of such matters would conclude 

 that they had taken their last farewell ; but then it may be seen in 

 my diaries also that considerable flocks have discovered themselves 

 again in the first week of November, and often on the 4th 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 enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. 



* This letter was first published by Bnrring'on in his " Miscellanies," in an essay "On 

 the Torpidity of the Swallow Tribe, when they Disappear," p. 225, and is prefaced as 

 f ll^ws : "I shall here subj in a letter which I received from that ingenious and observant 

 naturalist, the Rev. Mr. White, of Stlborne, in Hampshire." It appears to have been 

 printed as received. The opinions given in this letter have been generated apparently by 

 his_c^rresp<-ndence with Barrington, and those contained in the last paragraph especially 

 or in Letter LV., cann t be ma.nta'ned. 



