iOO 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER XXXVIII. To T. PENNANT, Esq. 
DEAR SIR, Selhorne, March 15, 1773. 
By my journal for last autumn it appears that the house-martins 
bred very late, and staid very late in these parts ; for, on the first 
of October, I saw^ young martins in their nest nearly fledged ; 
and again, on the twenty-first of October, v^e had at the next 
house a nest full of young martins just ready to fly ; and the old 
ones were hawking for insects with great alertness. The next 
morning the brood forsook their nest, and were flying round the 
village. From this day I never saw one of the swallow kind till 
November the third ; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house- 
martins were playing all day long by the side of the hanging 
wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak birds, some of 
which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift their quarters at 
this late season of the year to the other side of the northern 
tropic ? Or rather, is it not more probable that the next church, 
ruin, chalk-cliflf, steep covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool 
(as a more northern naturalist would say), may become their 
hyhernaculum, and aflford them a ready and obvious retreat ?* 
We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels 
every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels 
were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the 
southern verge of this county. Hence we may conclude that 
their migrations are only internal, and not extended to the con- 
tinent southward, if they do at first come at all from the north- 
ern parts of this island only, and not from the north of Europe. 
Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the fearless dis- 
regard that they show for men or guns, that they have been little 
accustomed to places of much resort.f Navigators mention that 
in the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds 
are so little acquainted with the human form that they settle on 
mens' shoulders ; and have no more dread of a sailor than they 
would have of a goat that was grazing. A young man at Lewes, 
* On this subject naturalists have not sufficiently discriminated between torpidity and hyberna- 
tion- Swallows have been found torpid, but only in the earlier winter months ; there has been 
no instance of their being thus observed in the spring, and we do not find that any make their 
appearance before the usual time of their coming, however warm and fine the weather may be 
The contrary would be of course the case if any hybernated. — Ed. 
t The few that I have occasionally observed in Surrey have been rather wild than otherwise. 
No other instance has been recorded of their wintering in England. — Ed. 
