130 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



colour. Near Valencia, in Spain, they are taken, says Willughby, and 

 sold in the markets for the table ; and are called by the country people, 

 probably from their desultory jerking manner of flight, Papilion de 

 Montagna. 



LETTEE XXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Sept. 28th, 1774. 



DEAR SIR. As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British 

 hirundines, so it is undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but 

 one instance of its appearing before the last week in April ; and in 

 some of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till the 

 beginning of May. This species usually arrives in pairs. 



The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture, 

 making no crust, or shell, for its nest ; but forming it of dry grasses 

 and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. With all my 

 attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover one 

 in the act of collecting or carrying in materials ; so that I have suspected 

 (since their- nests are exactly the same) that they sometimes usurp upon 

 the house-sparrows, and expel them, as sparrows do the house and 

 sand-martin; well remembering that I have seen them squabbling 

 together at the entrance of their holes, and the sparrows up in arms, 

 and much disconcerted at these intruders. And yet I am assured, 

 by a nice observer in such matters, that they do collect feathers for 

 their nests in Andalusia, and that he has shot them with such materials 

 in their mouths.* 



Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification quite 

 in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, and upon 

 the tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and therefore cannot 

 be so narrowly watched as those species that build more openly ; but, 

 from what I could ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle of 

 May ; and I have remarked, from eggs taken, that they have sat hard 

 by the ninth of June. In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, 

 and steeples, and breed only in such ; yet in this village some pairs 

 frequent the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young 

 under those thatched roofs. We remember but one instance where they 

 breed out of buildings, and that is in the sides of a deep chalk-pit 

 near the town of Odiham, in this county, where we have seen many 

 pairs entering the crevices, and skimming and squeaking round the 

 precipices. 



* The swift collects materials for its nest same as the swallows ; it is, however, 

 a very simple structure, and the opening to it is often so narrow that it is an 

 exertion for the parent bird to get in. White, towards the conclusion of this 

 letter, seems to be aware of only another swift the white-bellied; but there 

 are many now known, and as proposed in the same paragraph we allude to, 

 the last upon p. 133, the genus Cypselus has been formed, and is universally 

 recognised for them. The description of the swift in this letter is altogether 

 excellent, and alone would have shown Mr. White to have been a most close and 

 accurate observer. The white-bellied swift has been, taken ft. Great Britain. 



