OF SELBORNE. 183 



conveyed off without soiling or daubing. 1 Yet, as Nature 

 is cleanly in all her ways, the young perform this office for 

 themselves, in a little time, by thrusting their tails out at 

 the aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds 

 presently arrive at their faixia., or full growth, they soon 

 become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their 

 heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the 

 nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For 

 a time, the young are fed on the wing by their parents ; but 

 the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a 

 slight, that a person mast have attended very exactly to 

 their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As 

 soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams 

 immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second 

 brood: while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by 

 their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds 

 that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings 

 and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of 

 churches and houses. These congregations usually begin 

 to take place about the first week in August ; and therefore 

 we may conclude that by that time the first flight is pretty 

 well over. The young of this species do not quit their 

 abodes all together, but the more forward birds get abroad 

 some days before the rest. These, approaching the eaves 

 of buildings, and playing about before them, make people 

 think that several old ones attend one nest. They are 

 often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning 

 many edifices, and leaving them unfinished ; but when once 

 n nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several 

 seasons. Those which breed in a ready-finished house get 



1 It is a very curious provision of nature, as remarked by the Hon. 

 and Rev. W. Herbert, that the dung of all nestlings is enclosed in a thir? 

 membrane, which enables the old birds to carry it away in their bills, 

 which they do regularly each time they bring food to the nest. The 

 young instinctively, even before they can see, protrude their hind 

 quarters to eject the dung from the nest; but if the parent did not 

 carry it away, there would be a congeries of dirt under the nest, which 

 would not only be uncleanly, but would attract attention and discover 

 their retreat. ED. 



