34 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, were 

 winter-cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark 

 would run. In old times the Holt was estimated to be 

 eighteen miles, computed measure, from water-carriage, 

 viz., from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames ; but now 

 it is not half that distance, since the Wey is made navig- 

 able up to the town of Godalming in the county of 

 Surrey. 



LETTER X 



August 4, 1767. 



It has been my misfortune never to have had any 

 neighbours whose studies have led them towards the 

 pursuit of natural knowledge ; so that, for want of a com- 

 panion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, 

 I have made but slender progress in a kind of information 

 to which I have been attached from my childhood. 



As to swallows (hirundines rusticse) being found in a 

 torpid state during the winter in the Isle of "Wight, or any 

 part of this country, I never heard any such account 

 worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive 

 turn, assures me that, when he was a great boy, some 

 workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church 

 tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts 

 (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which were, at first 

 appearance, dead, but, on being carried toward the fire, 

 revived. 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 



* Brighton. 



