NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 55 



lick away what proceeds from their young. But in birds 

 there seems to be a particular provision, that the dung 

 of nestlings is enveloped in a tough kind of jelly, and 

 therefore is the easier conveyed off without soiling or 

 daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the 

 young perform this office for themselves in a little time 

 by thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. 

 As the young of small birds presently arrive at their r)\i/cta t 

 or full growth, they soon become impatient of confine- 

 ment, and sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, 

 where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with 

 food from morning to night. For a time the young are 

 fed on the wing by their parents ; but the feat is done by so 

 quick and almost imperceptible a flight that a person must 

 have attended very exactly to their motions before he would 

 be able to perceive it. 1 As soon as the young are able to 

 shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their 

 thoughts to the business of a second brood ; while the 

 first flight, shaken off and rejected by their nurses, con- 

 gregate in great flocks, and are the birds that are seen 

 clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and evenings 

 round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches 

 and houses. These congregatings usually begin to take 

 place about the first week in August ; and therefore we 

 may conclude that by that time the first flight is pretty well 

 over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes 

 altogether ; but the more forward birds get abroad some 

 days before the rest. These approaching the eaves of 

 buildings, and playing about before them, make people 

 think that several old ones attend one nest. They are 

 often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning 

 many edifices, and leaving them unfinished ; but when 

 once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for 

 several seasons. Those which breed in a ready-finished 

 house get the start in hatching of those that build new by 

 ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers are at 

 their labours in the long days before four in the morning. 



1 See vol. i. p. 132. [R. B. S.] 



