herself to be taken in hand. The squab young we 

 brought down and placed on the grass-plot, where 

 they tumbled about, and were as helpless as a new- 

 born child. While we contemplated their naked 

 bodies, their unwieldy 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 little more than a fortnight 

 would be able to dash through the air almost with 

 the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor ; and per- 

 haps, in their emigration, must traverse vast conti- 

 nents and oceans as distant as the equator. So 

 soon does Nature advance small birds to their 

 rfkiKia, or state of perfection ; while the progressive 

 growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and 

 tedious ! 



Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774. 



LETTER LXIII. 



To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



By means of the straight cottage-chimney I had 

 an opportunity this summer of remarking at my 

 leisure how swallows ascend and descend through 

 the shaft; but my pleasure in contemplating the 

 address with which this feat is performed to a con- 

 siderable depth in the chimney was somewhat inter- 



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