174 SWALLOWS. 



disproportioned abdomina, and their heads too heavy for their 

 necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected 

 that these shiftless beings, in a little more than a fortnight, 

 would be able to dash through the air almost with the incon- 

 ceivable swiftness of a meteor, and, perhaps, in their emigration, 

 must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the 

 equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds to their 

 3?X///a, or state of perfection ; while the progressive growth 

 of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious ! 



LETTER LXII. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, September, 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 plea- 

 sure in contemplating the address with which this feat was 

 performed, to a considerable depth in the chimney, was some- 

 what interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo 

 the same fate with those of Tobit.* 



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. With us, the 

 swallow was seen first on April the 4th ; the swift on April 

 the 24th ; the bank-marten on April the 12th ; and the house- 

 marten not till April the 30th. At South Zele, Devonshire, 

 swallows did not arrive till April the 25th ; swifts, in plenty, 

 on May the 1st ; and house-martens not till the middle of 

 May. At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 

 28th ; swallows, April the 29th ; house-martens, May the 1st. 

 Do these different dates, in such distant districts, prove any 

 thing for or against migration ? 



A farmer near Weyhill fallows his land with two teams of 

 asses, one of which works till noon, and the other in the after- 

 noon. When these animals have done their work, they are 

 penned all night, like sheep, on the fallow. In the winter, 

 they are confined and foddered in a yard, and make plenty of 

 dung. 



LinnaBus says, that hawks " padscuntu r inducias cum avibus, 

 quamdiu cuculus cuculat ;" but it appears to me, that, during 



* Tobit, ii. 10. 



