There fell in the county of Rutland, in three 

 weeks of this present very wet weather, seven 

 inches and a-half of rain, which is more than has 

 fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past 

 in that part of the world. A mean quantity in that 

 county for one year is twenty inches and a-half. 



Selborne, Dec, 20, 1770. 



LETTER XLII. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; 

 and the well-attested accounts from various parts of 

 the kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, 

 that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave 

 us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects 

 and bats, in a torpid state, and slumber away the 

 more uncomfortable months till the return of the sun 

 and fine weather awakens them. 



But then we must not, I think, deny migration in 



general ; because migration certainly does subsist in 



some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully 



informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has 



ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both 



spring and fall : during which periods myriads of the 



swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to 



south, and from south to north, according to the sea- 



156 



