OF SELBOENE. 79 



that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the 

 coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We 

 were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, 

 as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swal- 

 lows (Hirundines rusticce) clustering on the stunted shrubs 

 and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As 

 soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all were 

 on the wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, 

 proceeded on southward towards the sea : after this I did 

 not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler. 



SWALLOW. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the 

 swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they 

 come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once : only 

 some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, 

 there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. 

 Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a 

 warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after 

 they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable 

 gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some 

 friends under Merton Hall on a remarkably hot noon, either 

 in the last week in December or the first week in January, 

 he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the 

 moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have 

 frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford 



