sea: after this I did not see any more flocks, only 

 now and then a straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons who assert that 

 the swallow kind disappear gradually, as they come, 

 for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once: 

 only some few stragglers stay behind a long while, 

 and never, there is reason to believe, leave this island. 

 Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come 

 forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a 

 warm evening after they have disappeared for weeks. 

 For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, 

 as he was walking with some friends under Merton 

 wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last 

 week in December or the first week in January, he 

 espied three or four swallows huddled together on 

 the moulding of one of the windows of that college. 

 I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen 

 later at Oxford than elsewhere : is this owing to the 

 vast massy buildings of that place, to the many 

 waters round it, or to what else? 



When I used to rise in a morning last autumn, 

 and see the swallows and martins clustering on the 

 chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring cottages, 

 I could not help being touched with a secret delight, 

 mixed with some degree of mortification : with de- 

 light, to observe with how much ardour and punctu- 

 ality those poor little birds obeyed the strong im- 

 pulse towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on 



their minds by their great Creator; and with some 



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