haps they might be hardened, and able to shift for 

 themselves. 



About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks 

 yearly at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant 

 villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton Court. 

 In the autumn, I could not help being much amused 

 with those myriads of the sw^allow kind which as- 

 semble in those parts. But what struck me most 

 was, that, from the time they began to congregate, 

 forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 

 every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. 

 Now this resorting towards that element, at that sea- 

 son of the year, seems to give some countenance to 

 the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring 

 under w^ater. A Swedish naturalist is so much per- 

 suaded of that fact, that he talks, in his ''Calendar of 

 Flora," as familiarly of the swallow's going under 

 water in the beginning of September, as he would of 

 his poultry going to roost a little before sunset. 



An observing gentleman in London writes me 

 word that he saw a house-martin, on the twenty- 

 third of last October, flvino- in and out of its nest in 

 the Borough : and I myself, on the twenty-ninth of 

 last October (as I w^as travelling through Oxford), 

 saw four or five swallows hovering round and set- 

 tling on the roof of the county hospital. 



Now, is it likely that these poor little birds 

 (which perhaps had not been hatched but a few 

 weeks) should, at that late season of the year, and 

 6 49 



