NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
25 
Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a 
schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk 
cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people 
found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him 
whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappoint- 
ment, he answered me in the negative ; but that others assured him 
they did. 
Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the 
11th, and young martins {Mrundines urhicce) were then fledged in 
their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my 
fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September 
the 18th. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding 
than migration 1 i^ay, some young martins remained in their nests 
last year so late as September the 29th; and yet they totally dis- 
appeared with us by the 5th of October. 
How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the 
same life with the swallow and house martin, should leave us before the 
middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till the middle 
of October ; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th of 
November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight 
together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds ! 
A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or 
rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a 
sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.^ The stoparola of , 
Eay (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your l 
zoology the fly-catcher.f There is one circumstance characteristic of 
this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes 
its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth 
on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the 
ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together. 
I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla trochilus. 
Mr. Derham supposes, in " Ray's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered 
three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds 
that have as yet no English name. 
Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap ( motacilla * 
atricapilla ^ be a bird of passage or not : I think there is no doubt of it : 
for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, 
into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate 
songsters. J 
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on 
the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on 
wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. 
I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which 
* The woodwren or warbler, yellow-willow wren, of British authors, Sylvia 
sibilatrix, Latham, frequents old woods, and is easily known by the peculiar note 
alluded to, 
t The spotted-flycatcher of British authors, Muscicapa grisola, Linn. 
X The black-cap warbler, Sylvia atricapilla, Latham, is a rather late summer 
■visitant, and his arrival is immediately betrayed either by his song, or by the 
few peculiar notes warbled as he flits from bush to bush. The voice is much 
