NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBORNE. 
135 
LETTEE XXIL 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, Sept. 13^^, 1774. 
Dear Sir^ — By means of a straiglit cottage chimney I had an oppor- 
tunity this summer of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows ascend 
and descend through the shaft ; but my pleasure in contemplating the 
address with which this feat was performed to a considerable depth in 
the chimney, was somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes 
might undergo the same fate with those of Tobit."^ 
Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the 
different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very distant 
counties of this kingdom. With us the swallow was seen first on April 
the 4th, the swift on April the 24th, the bank-martin on April the 
12th, and the house-martin not till April the 30th. At South Zele, 
Devonshire, swallows did not arrive till April the 25th, swifts in 
plenty on May the 1st, and house-martins not till the middle of May. 
At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th, swallows 
April the 29th, house-martins May the 1st. Do these different dates, 
in such distant districts, prove anything for or against migration ] 
A farmer, near Weyhill, fallows his land with two teams of asses ; 
one of which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon. When 
these animals have done their work, they are penned all night, like 
sheep, on the fallow. In the winter they are confined and foddered in 
a yard, and make plenty of dung. 
Linnaeus says that hawks " paciscuntur inducias cum avihus, quamdiu 
cuculus cuculat ; " but it appears to me, that during that period, many 
little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by 
their feathers left in lanes and under hedges. 
The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving 
such birds as approach its nest with great fury to a distance. The 
Welch call it pen y llwyn," the head or master of the coppice. He 
suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he 
haunts ; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. 
In general, he is very successful in the defence of his family ; but once 
I observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to 
storm the nest of a missel-thrush : the dams defended their mansion 
with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but 
numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed 
the young alive. 
* "The same niglit also I returned from the burial and slept by the wall of my 
courtyard, bemg polluted, and my face was uncovered. — 
" And I knew not that there were sparrows (swallows ?) in the wall, and mine 
eyes being open, the sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a whiteness 
came in mine eyes ; and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not. " — 
ToBiT ii. 10. 
The Greek word is o-T^ovdia, pi. of o-r^ovOiov, dimin. of trr^ovBo? ; commonly trans- 
lated a sparrow, but taken also to mean any small bird. Bochart and the 
Latin vulgate take them to be Hirundines, which the Arabs held as a genus of 
sparrows, and called the " Sparrow of Paradise." — " Ghusfoor Aljinnut." 
