540 
NATURAL HI8T0BT 
LETTER lY. 
TO ROBERT MARSHAM, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, near Alton, Dec. 19, 1791. 
OUR letter wliicli met me so punctually in 
London^ was so intelligent, and so enter- 
taining, as to have merited a better treat- 
ment, and not to have been permitted to 
have lain so long unnoticed ! 
That there is no rule without an exception is an observa- 
tion that holds good in Natural History : for though you 
and I have often remarked that Swifts leave us in general 
by the first week in August : yet I see by my journal of this 
year, that a relation of mine had under the eaves of his 
dwelling house in a nest a young squab Swift, which the 
dam attended with great assiduity till September 6th;^ and 
on October 22nd, I discovered here at Selborne three young 
martins in a nest, which the dams fed and attended with 
great affection on to November 1st, a severe frosty day, when 
they disappeared, and one was found dead in a neigh- 
bour's garden. The middle of last September was a sweet 
season ! during this lovely Aveather the congregating flocks 
of house martins on the church tower were very beautiful 
and amusing. When they flew off all together from the roof 
€n any alarm they quite swarmed in the air. But they soon 
^ The length of stay wtich the Swifts make with us in autumn must 
in some measure depend upon the locality which they frequent during 
the summer, for in the parish of Harting, Sussex (not a dozen miles from 
Selborne), I have remarked during the last ten years that these birds 
invariably remain until the end of the first week in September, or at 
least a month after the average date of their departure as observed 
by White at Selborne. See Letter XXXVII. to Pennant (p. 114). 
—Ed. 
