174 SWALLOWS. 



pine-groTes about this house, but never make any long 

 stay.* 



The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, 

 still continues in this garden ; and retired under ground 

 about the 20th of November, and came out again for one 

 day on the 30th : it lies now buried in a wet swampy border 

 under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at present 

 in mud and mire ! 



Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants 

 of which seem to get their livelihood very easily ; for they 

 spend the greatest part of the day on their nest-trees when 

 the weather is mild. These rooks retire every evening, all 

 the winter, from this rookery, where they only call by the 

 way, as they are going to roost in deep woods ; at the 

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

 ceded a few miautes by a flight of daws that act as it were 

 as their harbingers. 



LETTEE LVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Jam. 2, 1769. 

 Dear Sir, — The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is, un- 

 doubtedly, the first comer of all the British hirundinfis ; and 

 appears in general on or about the 13th of April, as I have 

 remarked from many years' observation. Not but now and 

 then a straggler is seen much earlier; and, ia particular, 

 when I was a boy, I observed a swaUow for a whole day toge- 

 ther 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 



* A pretty large flock of crossbills visited Ambleside, in Westmoreland, in 

 October, 1828, frequenting tbe plantations of young larches. — W. J. 



