PETT1CHAPS, 297 



gant lessons still tease my imagination, and recur 

 irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even 

 when I am desirous of thinking of more serious 

 matters. 



LVII. 



A RARE, and I think a new little bird frequents 

 my garden, which I have great reason to think is 

 the pettichaps : it is common in some parts of the 

 kingdom ; and I have received formerly several 

 dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much 

 resembles the white-throat, but has a more white 

 or rather silvery breast and belly ; is restless and 

 active like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough 

 to bough, examining every part for food ; it also 

 runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and 

 putting its head into the bells of those flowers, 

 sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of 

 each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground 

 like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the 

 grass-plots and mown walks. 



One of my neighbours, an intelligent and ob- 

 serving man, informs me that, in the beginning 

 of May, and about ten minutes before eight o'clock 

 in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of 

 house-swallows, thirty at least, he supposes, 

 perching on a willow that hung over the verge of 

 James Knight's upper pond l . His attention was 



1 Spallanzani says very decidedly, that swallows retire 

 under water at the time of their disappearance from this 

 country ; but acknowledges that he had never himself 

 observed it, though his belief of the fact seemed certain. 

 He had performed a variety of experiments to resolve the 

 question, if cold would have the effect of producing torpidity, 



