540 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER IV, 



TO EGBERT MARSHAM, ESQUIRE. 



SELBORNE, NEAR ALTON, Dec. 19, 1791. 

 OUR letter, which met me so punctually in 

 London, was so intelligent, and so enter- 

 taining, as to have merited a better treat- 

 ment, and not to have been permitted to 

 have lain so long unnoticed ! 

 That there is no rule without an exception is an observa- 

 tion that holds good in Natural History : for though you 

 and I have often remarked that Swifts leave us in general 

 by the first week in August : yet I see by my journal of this 

 year, that a relation of mine had under the eaves of his 

 dwelling house in a nest a young squab Swift, which the 

 dam attended with great assiduity till September 6th; 1 and 

 on October 22nd, I discovered here at Selborne three young 

 martins in a nest, which the dams fed and attended with 

 great affection on to November 1st, a severe frosty day, when 

 they disappeared, and one was found dead in a neigh- 

 bour's garden. The middle of last September was a sweet 

 season ! during this lovely weather the congregating flocks 

 of house martins on the church tower were very beautiful 

 and amusing. When they flew off all together from the roof 

 on any alarm they quite swarmed in the air. But they soon 



1 The length of stay which the Swifts make with us in autumn must 

 in some measure depend upon the locality which they frequent during 

 the summer, for in the parish of Harting, Sussex (not a dozen miles from 

 Selborne), I have remarked during the last ten years that these birds 

 invariably remain until the end of the first week in September, or at 

 least a month after the average date of their departure as observed 

 by White at Selborne. See Letter XXXVII. to Pennant (p. 114). 



ED. 



