' ' Rriwry Erm. 



LETTER XXII 



TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE, Sept. 13, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, By means of a straight cottage-chimney I 

 had an opportunity this summer of remarking, at my leisure, 

 how swallows ascend and descend through the shaft : but 

 my pleasure in contemplating the address with which this 

 feat was performed to a considerable depth in the chimney 

 was somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes 

 might undergo the same fate with those of Tobitl 



Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at 

 what times the different species of hirundines arrived this 

 spring in three very distant counties of this kingdom. 



1 "The same night also I returned from the burial and slept by the wall of 

 my courtyard, being polluted, and my face was uncovered. 



"And I knew not that there were sparrows (swallows?) in the wall, and mine 

 eyes being open, the sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a white- 

 ness came into mine eyes ; and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not." 

 TOBIT ii. 10. 



The Greek word is arpovdta, pi. of arpovOlov, dimin. of <TTpov66s ; commonly 

 translated a sparrow, but taken also to mean any small bird. Bochart and the 

 Latin Vulgate take them to be hirundines, which the Arabs held as a genus of 

 sparrows, and called the " Sparrow of Paradise " " Ghusfoor Aljinnut." [W. J.] 



My friend the late Governor H. T. Ussher, alluding to the dislike of the natives 

 of the Gold Coast to any molestation of their swallows, says (Ibis, 1874, p. 62) 

 that the birds were considered to be "God's Children." [R. B. S.] 



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