160 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 



LETTEE XXXIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, May 13th, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, Among the many singularities attending those amusing 

 birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every 

 year the same number of pairs invariably ; at least the result of my 

 inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows 

 and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the 

 village, that it is hardly possible to recount them ; while the swifts, 

 though they do not build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and 

 play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The 

 number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which 

 reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and 

 meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being 

 made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes 

 annually of this increase ; and what determines every spring which 

 pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts 1 



Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have 

 always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange 

 avTHTTopyn, which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the 

 most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds 

 over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district 

 would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be destitute 

 and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous 

 supriority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes ; and the 

 rivalry of the males in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one 

 on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the 

 same exact number annually is not easy to say,' for reasons given above ; 

 but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, 

 that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the 

 numbers retiring. 



LETTEE XL. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, June 2nd, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, The standing objection to botany has always been, that 

 it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without 

 improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge ; and, where the 

 science is carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the 

 charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping 



Strike to their madrigals the plaintive lyre. 

 Such, feign they, sees the shepherd obvious oft, 

 Led on by Pan, with pine-leaved garland crown 'd 

 And seven-mouth'd reed his labouring lip beneath, 

 Waking the woodland muse with ceaseless song. " 



J. MASON GOOD. 



