NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 125 
over the salt water. Horsemen on wide downs are often closely attended 
by a little party of swallows for miles together, which plays before and 
behind them, sweeping around them, and collecting all the sculking 
insects that are roused by the trampling of the horses' feet ; when the 
wind blows hard, without this expedient, they are often forced to settle 
to pick up their lurking prey. 
This species feeds much on little Coleoptera, as well as on gnats and 
flies ; and often settles on dug ground, or paths, for gravels to grind and 
digest its food. Before they depart, for some weeks, to a bird, they forsake 
houses and chimneys, and roost in trees ; and usually withdraw about 
the beginning of October ; though some few stragglers may appear on 
at times till the first week in November. 
Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of London next the 
fields, but do not enter, like the house-martin, the close and crowded 
parts of the city. 
Both male and female are distinguished from their congeners by the 
length and forkedness of their tails. They are undoubtedly the most 
nimble of all the species : and when the male pursues the female in 
amorous chace, they then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a 
rapidity almost too quick for the eye to follow. 
After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning crropy^ of 
the swallow, I shall add, for your farther amusement, an anecdote or 
two not much in favour of her sagacity : — 
A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a 
pair of garden-shears, that were stuck up against the boards in an out- 
house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that imple- 
ment was wanted : and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same 
species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl, that happened 
by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, 
with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a 
curiosity worthy the most elegant private museum in Great Britain. 
The owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the bringer 
with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it just where the owl 
hung : the person did as he was ordered, and the following year a pair, 
probably the same pair, built their nest in the conch, and laid 
their eggs. 
The OAvl and the conch make a strange grotesque appearance, and 
are not the least curious specimens in that wonderful collection of art 
and nature."^ 
Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its way, an undis- 
tinguishing, limited faculty ; and blind to every circumstance that does 
not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the 
propagation or support of their species. 
I am, with all respect, &c. &c. 
\ 
^ Sir Ashton Lever's "Musseum." 
