NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 135 



LETTER XXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORUE, Sept. 13th, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an oppor- 

 tunity 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 was performed to a considerable depth in 

 the chimney, was somewhat 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-martin on April the 

 12th, and the house-martin 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-martins not till the middle of May. 

 At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th, swallows 

 April the 29th, house-martins May the 1st. Do these different dates, 

 in such distant districts, prove anything for or against migration ? 



A farmer, near Waybill, fallows his land with two teams of asses ; 

 one of which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon. 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 indudas cum avibus, quamdiu 

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

 little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by 

 their feathers left in lanes and under hedges. 



The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving 

 such birds as approach its nest with great fury to a distance. The 

 Welch call it " pen y llwyn," the head or master of the coppice. He 

 suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he 

 haunts ; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. 

 In general, he is very successful in the defence of his family ; but once 

 I observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to 

 storm the nest of a missel-thrush : the dams defended their mansion 

 with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but 

 numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed 

 the young alive. 



* "The same night also I returned from the burial and slept by the wall of my 

 courtyard, being polluted, and my face was uncovered. 



" And I knew not that there were sparrows (swallows ?) in the wall, and mine 

 eyes being open, the sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a whiteness 

 came in mine eyes ; and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not." 

 TOBIT ii. 10. 



The Greek word is ffr^au9ia, pi. of rrfmtiitt, dimin. of e-r^Oos ; commonly trans- 

 lated a sparrow, but taken also to mean any small bird. Bochart and the 

 Latin vulgate take them to be Hirundines, which the Arabs held as a genus of 

 sparrows, and called the " Sparrow of Paradise." " Ghusfoor Aljinnut." 



