OF SELBORNE, 
79 
that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the 
coast_, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We 
were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, 
as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swal- 
lows (Hirundmes rusticce) clustering on the stunted shrubs 
and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As 
soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all were 
on the wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, 
proceeded on southward towards the sea : after this I did 
not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler. 
SWALLOW. 
I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the 
swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they 
come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once : only 
some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, 
there is the greatest 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 Hall 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 
