OF SELBOENE 53 



chatters sitting as well as flying ; and therefore the noise was 

 voluntary, and from organic impulse, and not from the resistance 

 of the air against the hollow of its mouth and throat. 



If ever I saw any thing like actual migration, it was last 

 Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning : 

 at first there was a vast fog ; but, by the time that I was got 

 seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke 

 out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath 

 or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break 

 away, great numbers of swallows (hirundines rusticce) clustering 

 on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there 

 all night. As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they 

 all were on the wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, 

 proceeded on southward towards the sea : after this I did not 

 see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow 

 kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the 

 bulk of them seem to withdraw at once : l only some stragglers 

 stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest 

 reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay them- 

 selves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually 

 of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For 

 a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking 

 with some friends under Merton-wall on a remarkably hot noon, 

 either in the last week in December or the first week in January, 

 he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the mould- 

 ing of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently 

 remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere : 

 is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the 

 many waters round it, or to what else ? 2 



When I used to rise in a morning last autumn, and see the 

 swallows and martins clustering on the chimnies and thatch 

 of the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched 

 with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification : 

 with delight, to observe with how much ardour and punctuality 

 those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migra- 



1 [White was here in error ; swallows and martins leave gradually, travelling 

 from their haunts to the coast in successive parties. Had he discovered this, 

 he would have been saved much needless speculation, as will be seen further on. 

 See Introduction, p. xxxv.] 



2 [Merton College, and particularly the southern side of it, looking on Christ 

 Church meadow, is still a favourite haunt of belated swallows, owing no doubt to 

 its sunny aspect and the abundance of insects in the meadow.] 



