attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind 

 of information to which I have been attached from 

 my childhood. 



As to swallows {Hiriindines rusticce) being found 

 in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of 



One of the old Selborne houses. 



Wight, or any part of this country, 1 never heard 

 any such account worth attending to. But a clergy- 

 man, of an inquisitive turn, assures me that, when he 

 was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down 

 the battlements of a church tower earlv in the 

 spring, found two or three swifts {Hiriindines apodes) 

 among the rubbish, which seemed, at their first ap- 

 pearance, dead ; but, on being carried towards the 

 5 33 



