INTEODUCTION xxxi 



who can but correct mistakes of no great moment, or help to 

 gratify the natural curiosity which seeks to learn something 

 more about so entertaining a writer. 



IV.— WHITE'S VIEW OF THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS.i 



By W. Warde Fowler. 



Readers of the Natural History of Selborne are naturally 

 surprised to find that throughout the series of letters, i.e., to 

 the end of his life, this most careful observer was never able 

 to free himself entirely from the old belief that birds of the 

 swallow kind do not all leave us in autumn, and that many 

 remain in a torpid state during the winter, hidden away in 

 holes or other convenient winter quarters. His general ideas 

 of migration were indeed sensible enough, and were supported 

 by the observations of his brother John at Gibraltar. He 

 never seems to have doubted that the majority of our summer 

 migrants, the " short- winged birds of passage," as he calls 

 them, leave our shores for the south in autumn, and return 

 again in spring, and he was the first to discover that the ring- 

 ousel is a passing visitor to the south of England both in 

 spring and autumn. But in the case of swallows and martins 

 the traditional idea kept at least an intermittent hold on his 

 mind, and even led him to misinterpret his own careful obser- 

 vations. In Letter LI. to Barrington we find him actually 

 employing some labourers to explore the shrubs and cavities 

 of a spot near Selborne, in which he fancied that the martins 

 might be lying hid. 



This loyalty to an old delusion is so remarkable in a man 

 of White's mental acuteness and out-of-door habits that it 

 seems worth while to ask how English ornithologists came 

 by it, and why it was that White was unable to clear his 

 mind of it. Even at the present day it has not entirely 

 disappeared.^ 



' On migration in general the reader may consult the article ' ' Migration " in 

 Newton's Dictionary of Birds, and for animal hibernation the article " Hibernation " 

 in the Encyclopcedia Britannica. 



2 See Mr. C. Dixon's Migration of Birds, p. 8 f. 



