LXXXI.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I 
liave always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that 
strange avTLa-Topyrj, or antipathy, which immediately succeeds in 
the feathered kind to the most passionate fondness, is tlie occa- 
sion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. 
Without this provisiou one favourite district would be crowded 
with inhabitants, while others would be destitute and forsaken. 
But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and 
to oblige the young to seek for new abodes : and the rivalry of 
the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on 
the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in 
the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons 
given above : but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in 
my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner 
of proportion to the numbers retiiing 
Selborne, May 13, 1778. 
• Ill NriMii'h roG 
