22 THE NATUKAL HISTORY 



He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, he 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 1 1th, and young martins (hirundines urbicce) were then fledged 

 in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see 

 by my fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late 

 as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more 

 in favour of hiding than migration .'' Nay, some young martins 

 remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty- 

 ninth ; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth 

 of October. 



How strange is it that the swift, which seems to live exactly 

 the same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave 

 us before the middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay 

 often till the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of 

 house-martins on the seventh of November.''' The martins and 

 red-wing Jieldfares were flying in sight together ; an uncommon 

 assemblage of summer and winter-birds ! 



A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, 

 or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make 

 a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.^ The stoparola 

 of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is 

 called, in your Zoology, the fly -catcher. There is one circumstance 

 characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped observa- 

 tion, and that is, that it takes it's stand on the top of some stake 

 or post, from whence it springs forth on it's prey, catching a fly 



1 [Later instances are recorded : White mentions one in Letter XL to Pennant.] 



2 [See below (Letters XVL and XIX. to Pennant). The "little yellow bird" 

 was undoubtedly the wood-wren (Phylloscopus sibilatrix, Bechst. ). In this sen- 

 tence the word species seems to be loosely used : in its technical sense it is 

 rare in White's writings. The alauda trivialis was (and is) the tree-pipit ; the 

 motacilla trochilus was the willow-wren {Phylloscopus trochilus, L. ). All that 

 \yhite meant to say was that the little yellow bird might be closely related to 

 either of these ; he had probably as yet not seen it clearly, or he would not have 

 compared it to the tree-pipit.] 



