OF SELBORNE 223 



LETTER XXXIX 



Selborne, May 13, 1778. 

 Dear Sir, 



Among the many singularities attending tliose amusing 

 birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that 

 we have every year the same number of pairs invariably ; 

 at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the 

 j^ame for a long time past. The swallows and martins are 

 so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, 

 that it is hardly possible to recount them ; while the 

 swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so 

 frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, 

 that they are easily enumerated. The number that I 

 constantly find are eight pairs ; about half of which reside 

 in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest 

 and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight 

 pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly 

 eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase ; 

 and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit 

 us, and re-occupy their ancient haunts ? 



Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, 

 I have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affec- 

 tion, that strange avricrropyr], which immediately succeeds 

 in the feathered kind to the most passionate fondness, is 

 the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face 

 of the earth. Without this provision one favourite dis- 

 trict would be crowded with inhabitants, while others 

 would be destitute and forsaken. But the parent birds 

 seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to oblige the 

 young to seek for new abodes : and the rivalry of the 

 males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one 

 on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins 



