OF SELBORNE 145 



LETTER XXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774. 

 DEAR SIR, 



As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British hirundines, 1 

 so is it undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but one 

 instance of it's appearing before the last week in April : and in 

 some of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till 

 the beginning of May. This species usually arrives in pairs. 



The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture, 

 making no crust, or shell, for it's nest ; but forming it of dry 

 grasses and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. 

 With all my attention to these birds, I have never been able once 

 to discover one in the act of collecting or carrying in materials : 

 so that I have suspected (since their nests are exactly the same) 

 that they sometimes usurp upon the house-sparrows, and expel 

 them, as sparrows do the house and sand-martin ; well remember- 

 ing that I have seen them squabbling together at the entrance of 

 their holes ; and the sparrows up in arms, and much disconcerted 

 at these intruders. And yet I am assured, by a nice observer in such 

 matters, that they do collect feathers for their nests in Andalusia ; 

 and that he has shot them with such materials in their mouths. 2 



Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification 

 quite in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, 

 and upon the tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and 

 therefore cannot be so narrowly watched as those species that 

 build more openly : but, from what I could ever observe, they 

 begin nesting about the middle of May ; and I have remarked, 

 from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by the ninth of June. 

 In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and steeples, and 

 breed only in such : yet in this village some pairs frequent the 

 lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young under those 



1 [The swift (Cypselus apus, L.) is now included with the woodpeckers, bee-eaters, 

 etc. , in the order Picaria, and is removed far away from the Hirundinidce. White 

 notes in this letter several of the points of difference between the two European 

 swifts and the Hirundinidce^ which they superficially resemble, and also mentions 

 Scopoli's proposal to place them in a genus by themselves ; but he naturally accented 

 the Linnean classification. He never interfered in matters which demanded a wider 

 knowledge than his own.] 



2 [His brother, John White, then chaplain at Gibraltar.] 



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