NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
127 
past. For land-springs have never obtained more since the memory 
of man than during that period ; nor has there been known a greater 
scarcity of all sorts of grain, considering the great improvements of 
modern husbandry. Such a run of wet seasons a century or two 
ago would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine. Therefore 
pamphlets and newspaper letters, that talk of combinations, tend to 
inflame and mislead ; since we must not expect plenty till Providence 
sends us more favourable seasons. 
The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the county of 
Eutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad ; and our wheat on the 
ground, by the continual late sudden vicissitudes from fierce frost to 
pouring rains, looks poorly ; and the turnips rot very fast. 
I am, &c. 
^LETTEE XX. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, Feb. 26th, 1774. 
Dear Sir. — The sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the least 
of any of the British hirundines ; and, as far as we have ever seen, the 
smallest known hirundo ; though Brisson asserts that there is one 
much smaller, and that is the hirundo esculenta.^' 
But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any 
observer to be so 
full and exact as he 
could wish in re- 
citing the circum- 
stances attending 
the life and conver- 
sation of this little 
bird, since it is /era 
naturd, at least in 
this part of the king- 
dom, disclaiming 
all domestic attach- 
ments, and haunt- 
ing wild heaths 
and commons where esculent swallow. 
there are large 
lakes ; while the other species, especially the swallow and house-martin, 
are remarkably gentle and domesticated, and never seem to think 
themselves safe but under the protection of man. 
Here are in this parish, in the sand-pits and banks of the lakes of 
Woolmer forest, several colonies of these birds ; and yet they are never 
* The H. esculenta is very small in body, but has a large extent of wing ; it 
belongs more properly to the group of swifts. There are one or two species 
smaller even than that mentioned by Brisson. 
The flea of the sand-martin, mentioned next page, is not the same as the bed- 
flea, but is the Ceratophyllus bifaciatus of Curtis. 
