OF SELBORNE 69 



It gave me satisfaction to find that we accorded so 

 well about the caprimulgus : all I contended for was to 

 prove that it often chatters sitting as well as flying ; and 

 therefore the noise was voluntary, and from organic im- 

 pulse, and not from the resistance of the air against 

 the hollow of its mouth and throat. 



If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last 

 Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the 

 morning : at first there was a vast fog ; but, by the time 

 that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards 

 the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. 

 We were then on a large heath or common, and I could 

 discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers 

 of swallows (hirundines rusticas) clustering on the stunted 

 shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night; 

 As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all 

 were on the wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy 

 flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea : after 

 this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a 

 straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the 

 swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as 

 they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at 

 once : only some stragglers stay behind a long while, and 

 do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave 

 this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to 

 come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a 

 warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. 

 For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he 

 was walking with some friends under Merton-wall on a 

 remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December 

 or the first week in January, he espied three or four 

 swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the 

 windows of that college. I have frequently remarked 

 that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere : i^ 



