OF SELBORNE 145 



dawn of day they always revisit their nest-trees, and are 



preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws, that act, as it 



were, as their harbingers, j 



° 1 am, etc. 



LETTER XVIII 

 TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



Selborne, Jan. 29, 1774. 



Dear Sir, 

 The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly 

 the first comer of all the British hirundines ; and appears 

 in general on or about the thirteenth of April, as I have 

 remarked from many years' observation. Not but now 

 and then a straggler is seen much earlier : and, in par- 

 ticular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole 

 day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday ; which 

 day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and 

 often happened early in February. 



It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first 

 about lakes and mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, 

 that if these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, 

 as was the case of the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 

 1 77 1, they immediately withdraw for a time. A circum- 

 stance this much more in favour of hiding than migration ; 

 since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to 

 its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or 

 two only to warmer latitudes. 



The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no 



means builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns 



and out-houses against the rafters ; and so she did in 



Virgil's time : 



" Ant^ 



Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo." 



In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, 

 the barn-swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe 



K 



