OF SELBORNE. 33 



LETTER X. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



August 4, 1767. 



T has been my misfortune never to have had 

 any neighbours whose studies have led them 

 towards the pursuit of natural knowledge ; 

 so that, for want of a companion to quicken 

 my industry and sharpen my attention, 1 

 have made but slender progress in a kind of information to 

 which I have been attached from my childhood. 



As to swallows (Hirundines rusticce) being found in a 

 torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any 

 part of this country, I never heard any such account worth 

 attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, 

 assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, 

 in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in 

 the spring, found two or three swifts (Hirundines apodes l ) 

 among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead ; 

 but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me 

 that, out of his great care to preserve them, hc % put them in 

 a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they 

 were suffocated. 



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 disappointment, 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 eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urbicce) 



1 Cypselus apus of modern ornithologists. ED. 

 D 



