NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Ill 
round-billed birds, and can grope for their meat when out of sight. 
Perhaps, then, their associates attend them on the motive of interest, 
as greyhounds wait on the motions of their finders ; and as lions are 
said to do on the yelpings of jackalls. Lapwings and starlings some- 
times associate.* 
LETTEE XII. 
TO THE SAME. 
March 9th, 1772. 
Dear Sir, — As a gentleman and myself were walking on the fourth 
of last November round the sea-banks at !N"ewhaven, near the mouth of 
the Lewes river, in pursuit of natural knowledge, we were surprised to 
see three house-swallows gliding very swiftly by us. That morning was 
rather chilly, with the wind at north-west ; but the tenor of the weather 
for some time before had been delicate, and the noons remarkably 
warm. From this incident, and from repeated accounts which I meet 
with, I am more and more induced to believe that many of the swallow 
kind do not depart from this island, but lay themselves up in holes and 
caverns ; and do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and 
then retire again to their latebrce. Nor make I the least doubt but 
that, if I lived at Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those 
towns near the chalk cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, 
I should see swallows stirring at periods of the winter, when the noons 
were soft and inviting, and the sun warm and invigorating. And I am 
the more of this opinion from what I have remarked during some of our 
. late springs, that though some swallows did make their appearance 
about the usual time, viz., the thirteenth or fourteenth of April, yet 
meeting with an harsh reception, and blustering cold north-east winds, 
they immediately withdrew, absconding for several days, till the weather 
gave them better encouragement. 
LETTEE XIII. 
TO THE SAME. 
April mh, 1772. 
Dear Sir, — While I^was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at 
the village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of 
writing to you. On the first of November I remarked that the old 
tortoise, formerly mentioned, began first to dig the ground in order to 
the forming its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great 
tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and 
throws it up over its back with its hind ; but the motion of its legs is 
ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock ; and suitable 
* In Holland lapwings and starlings associate in vast flocks, particularly after 
the season of incubation has passed, and the broods have joined together. In the 
open meadows that border the canals they may be seen together in thousands. 
