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NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTEE XXXIX. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, May ISiJi, 1778. 
Dear Sie, — Among the many singularities attending those amusing 
birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every 
year the same number of pairs invariably ; at least the result of my 
inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows 
and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the 
village, that it is hardly possible to recount them ; while the swifts, 
though they do not build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and 
play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The 
number that I constantly find are eight pairs ; about half of which 
reside in the church, and the rest build in some' of the lowest and 
meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being 
made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes 
annually of this increase ; and what determines every spring which 
pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts 1 
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have 
always supposed that that sudden reverse of aflfection, that strange 
avTKTTopyy], which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the 
most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds 
over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district 
would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be destitute 
and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous 
supriority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes ; and the 
rivalry of the males in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one 
on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the 
same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above ; 
but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, 
that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the 
numbers retiring. 
LETTEE XL. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, June 2nd, 1778. 
Dear Sir, — The standing objection to botany has always been, that 
it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without 
improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge ; and, where the 
science is carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the 
charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping 
Strike to their madrigals the plaintive lyre. 
Such, feign they, sees the shepherd obvious oft, 
Led on by Pan, with pine-leaved garland crown'd 
And seven-mouth'd reed his labouring lip beneath, 
Waking the woodland muse with ceaseless song." 
J. Mason Good. 
