SWALLOW. 147 



says, I have always remarked that in particular seasons, birds 

 are more prone to assume variety in the colour of their 

 plumage, than in others. 



While staying last summer, 1851, with my sincerely valued 

 friend and old schoolfellow, the Eev. Henry Hilton, Hector 

 of Milsted, near Sittinghourne, Kent, I noticed, in the course 

 of a walk by Torry Hill, the seat of Mr. Pemberton Leigh, 

 a white bird on the wing, which I at first took to be a 

 Starling, but which proved to be a young Swallow. After 

 two or three unsuccessful flying shots with an ancient 'piece,' 

 which might be supposed to be from the same armoury as 

 that from which Robinson Crusoe was supplied, it at last fell 

 from a rail where I aimed at it sitting. I had previously 

 been informed of a brood of White Swallows at this place, 

 and having applied to Mr. Chaffey, of Dodington, near 

 Sitting-bourne, for a chronicle of the facts, he obliged me with 

 the following statement: 'In IS 19, a pair of Swallows built 

 a nest,*'and hatched their young in a bakehouse attached to 

 a farm-house, in the parish of Frinsted, in the occupation of 

 a Mr. Filmer. Out of the number of young ones there was 

 a milk-white one, which was shot some time after they had 

 flown, and is now in my collection. In the following year, 

 1S50, a pair, most likely the same, built another nest in the 

 same place, and hatched two white ones, one of which was 

 sent to me; what became of the other I never heard. This 

 year, 1851, a pair again built their nest in the same place, 

 and hatched two white ones, the fate of one of which you, 

 sir, are acquainted with. They had ingress and egress through 

 a broken pane of glass. The bakehouse was constantly used 

 for baking and other purposes, of which the old birds took 

 little or no notice.' 



