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 

 j^X/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. 



Linnaeus says, that hawks " paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, 

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



* Tobit, ii. 10. 



