NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 25 



Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a 

 schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk 

 cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people 

 found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him 

 whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappoint- 

 ment, he answered me in the negative ; but that others assured him 

 they did. 



Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the 

 llth, and young martins (hirundines urbicce) were then fledged in 

 their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my 

 fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September 

 the 18th. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding 

 than migration'? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests 

 last year so late as September the 29th; and yet they totally dis- 

 appeared with us by the 5th of October. 



How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the 

 same life with the swallow and house martin, should leave us before the 

 middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till the middle 

 of October ; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th of 

 November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight 

 together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds ! 



A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or 

 rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a 

 sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.* The stoparola of 

 Eay (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your 

 zoology the fly-catcher, f There is one circumstance characteristic of 

 this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes 

 its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth 

 on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the 

 ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together. 



I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla trochilus. 

 Mr. Derham supposes, in " Kay's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered 

 three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds 

 that have as yet no English name. 



Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla 

 atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not : I think there is no doubt of it: 

 for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, 

 into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate 

 songsters.^ 



Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on 

 the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on 

 wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. 



I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which 



* The woodwren or warbler, yellow-willow wren, of British authors, Sylvia 

 sibilatrix, Latham, frequents old woods, and is easily known by the peculiar note 

 alluded to. 



t The spotted-flycatcher of British authors, Muscicapa grisola, Linn. 



j The black-cap warbler, Sylvia atricapilla, Latham, is a rather late summer 

 visitant, and his arrival is immediately betrayed either by his song, or by the 

 few peculiar notes warbled as he flits from bush to bush. The voice is much 



