LVll.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
155 
bird of this sort came witliiii my observation. I only saw a 
few larks and wliinchats, some rooks, and several kites and 
buzzards. 
About summer a fliglit of crossbills comes to the pine-groves 
about this liouse, but never makes any long stay. 
The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, 
still continues in this garden ; and retired under ground about 
tlie 20th of November, and came out again for one day on 
tlie 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 
tlie 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 preceded a few minutes by a flight of 
daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers. 
EiNGMER, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773. 
LETTER LVII. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRING TON. 
The house-swallow,^ or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the 
first comer of all the British hiruiicliiies ; 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, in particular, when I was a boy I ob- 
served a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm 
Shrove Tuesday ; which day could not fall out later than the 
middle of March, and often happened early in February. 
^ nhimney-swallow, Hirundo rustica, Linnaeus. 
