September 



especially since our Increase of Trade and Navigation, 

 is to me a Matter of no less Difficulty." 



But it is toward dear old Gilbert White of 

 Selborne that one warms with equal sympathy and 

 respect. Again and again he opens his mind on this 

 subject in that inimitable series of letters constituting 

 the "Natural History of Selborne." He has the 

 true scientific horror of extremes. 



" As to swallows being found in a torpid state 

 during winter," he writes, "... I never heard any 

 such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, 

 of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a 

 great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battle- 

 ments of a church tower early in the spring, found 

 two or three swifts among the rubbish, which were at 

 first appearance dead ; but, on being carried toward the 

 fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care 

 to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and 

 hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were 

 suffocated." 



Further on, in the same letter, adverting to the 

 fact that broods of young swallows came forth so 

 late as the i8th September, he asks, "Are not 

 these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than 

 migration ? " 



Then, as to the swarming of swallows prior to 

 migrating, he writes (Letter XII.) : " In the autumn 

 I could not help being much amused with those 

 myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those 

 parts. But what struck me most was, that from the 



17 c 



