OF SELBORNE. 
551 
made their first appearance about the 18th and 20th, and 
once as early as the 12th of October, and remained in great 
abundance until the beginning of March. 
" These phsenomena awakened and alarmed my curiosity 
as events entirely new and unheard of among the body of 
Ornithologists, and induced me to be particularly exact and 
attentive in my observations on every part of their conduct. 
Early in the autumn vast multitudes of these martins con- 
gregate in all parts of the town of Castillar, which is situate 
on the summit of a precipice most singularly lofty and ro- 
mantic, about twenty miles north of Gibraltar, Hence it 
may be inferred that they build and breed on the inland 
mountains of Andalusia and Grenada. But on the approach 
of winter, when their summer habitations become bleak and 
inhospitable (for all those mountains are then usually 
covered with snow), they retreat to these warm shores, and 
remain there till the snow is gone next spring. A few are 
always to be seen about our hill by the middle of October, 
shifting round to all sides of the rock at times to avoid the 
wind. Ii[ovember 2, 1771, I saw several, with some young 
ones among them sitting in groups, on the cliffs, where the 
old ones came and fed them.^^ 
Thus have I, for your amusement, according to promise, 
sent you an extract concerning this new, and unnoticed 
swallow, which my brother, with great propriety, in his 
work has called Hirundo hyemalis ;^ and has given several 
particulars concerning it, and a description of it, too long 
for the compass of a letter. 
Permit me just to hint to you, that I wrote to you some 
time ago in answer to your last letter, which gave me much 
satisfaction. 
I forgot to mention in the extract, that these winter 
swallows usually leave Gibraltar about the beginning of 
March, unless deep snows (as is sometimes the case, and 
^ In his twenty-second letter to Pennant (p. 102), and in the fifth 
letter of the present series, the species is named hybema. The above 
name hyemalis possibly is a lapsus memorice. — Ed. 
