Dear Sir, 



OF SELBORNE 145 



LETTER XXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774. 



As the swifl or black-martin is the largest of the British himndines,^ 

 so is it undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but one 

 instance of it's appearing before the last week in April : and in 

 some of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till 

 the beginning of Mai/. This species usually arrives in pairs. 



The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture, 

 making no crust, or shell, for it's nest ; but forming it of dry 

 grasses and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. 

 With all my attention to these birds, I have never been able once 

 to discover one in the act of collecting or carrying in materials : 

 so that I have suspected (since their nests are exactly the same) 

 that they sometimes usurp upon the house-sparrows, and expel 

 them, as sparrows do the house and sand-martin ; well remember- 

 ing that I have seen them squabbling together at the entrance of 

 their holes ; and the sparrows up in arms, and much disconcerted 

 at these intruders. And yet I am assured, by a nice observer in such 

 matters, that they do collect feathers for their nests in Andalusia ; 

 and that he has shot them with such materials in their mouths.^ 



Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification 

 quite in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, 

 and upon the tops of the walls of churches under the roof ; and 

 therefore cannot be so narrowly watched as those species that 

 build more openly : but, from what I could ever observe, they 

 begin nesting about the middle of May ; and I have remarked, 

 from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by the ninth of June. 

 In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and steeples, and 

 breed only in such : yet in this village some pairs frequent the 

 lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young under those 



' [The swift [Cypselus afus, L.) is now included with the woodpeckers, bee-eaters, 

 etc. , in the order Picarice, and is removed far away from the Hirundinidte. White 

 notes in this letter several of the points of difference between the two European 

 swifts and the Hirundinidce, which they superficially resemble, and also mentions 

 Soopoli's proposal to place them in a genus by themselves ; but he naturally accepted 

 the Linnean classification. He never interfered in matters which demanded a wider 

 knowledge than his own.] 



2 [His brother, John White, then chaplain at Gibraltar.] 



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