OF SELBOENE 131 



some martins build year by year in the corners of the windows. 

 But, as the corners of these windows (which face to the south- 

 east and south-west) are too shallow, the nests are washed down 

 every hard rain ; and yet these birds drudge on to no purpose 

 from summer to summer, without changing their aspect or house. 

 It is a piteous sight to see them labouring when half their nest 



is washed away and bringing dirt "generis lapsi sarcire 



minus". 1 Thus is instinct a most wonderful unequal faculty; 

 in some instances so much above reason, in other respects so far 

 below it ! Martins love to frequent towns, especially if there are 

 great lakes and rivers at hand ; nay they even affect the close air 

 of London. And I have not only seen them nesting in the 

 Borough, but even in the Strand and Fleet-street ; but then 

 it was obvious from the dinginess of their aspect that their 

 feathers partook of the filth of that sooty atmosphere. Martins 

 are by far the least agile of the four species ; their wings and 

 tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of such 

 surprising turns and quick and glancing evolutions as the swallow. 

 Accordingly they make use of a placid easy motion in a middle 

 region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and 

 never sweeping long together over the surface of the ground 

 or water. They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered 

 districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in 

 some hollow vale, especially in windy weather. They breed the 

 latest of all the swallow kind: in 1772 they had nestlings on to 

 October the twenty-first, and are never without unfledged young 

 as late as Michaelmas. 



As the summer declines the congregating flocks increase in 

 numbers daily by the constant accession of the second broods : 

 till at last they swarm in myriads upon myriads round the 

 villages on the Thames, darkening the face of the sky as they 

 frequent the aits of that river, where they roost They retire, 

 the bulk of them I mean, in vast flocks together about the 

 beginning of October : but have appeared of late years in a 

 considerable flight in this neighbourhood, for one day or two, 

 as late as November the third and sixth, after they were supposed 

 to have been gone for more than a fortnight. They therefore 

 withdraw with us the latest of any species. Unless these birds 

 are very short-lived indeed, or unless they do not return to the 

 district where they are bred, they must undergo vast devastations 



1 [Virg., Georg., iv., 249.] 



