OFSELBORNE. 35 
bourhood. I employed fome people to procure me a fpeclmen, 
but without fuccefs. See Letter VIII. 
^ery — Might not Canary birds be naturalized to this climate, 
provided their eggs were put, in the fpring, into the nefts of 
fome of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, &c. ? Before 
winter perhaps they might be hardened, and able to fliift for 
themfelves. 
About ten years ago I ufed to fpend fome weeks yearly at 
Sunbury, which is one of thofe pleafant villages lying on the 
Thames, near Hampton-court. In the autumn, I could not help 
being much amufed with thofe myriads of. the fwallow kind 
which aflemble in thofe parts. But what flruck me moft was, that, 
from the time they began to congregate, forfaking the chimnies 
and houfes, they roofted every night in the ofier-beds of the aits 
of that river. Now this reforting towards that element, at that 
feafon of the year, feems to give fome countenance to the northern 
opinion (flrange as it is) of their retiring under water. A SzvediJJj 
naturalift is fo much perfuaded of that fad, that he talks, in his 
calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the fwallow's going under water 
in the beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to 
rooft a little before funfet. 
An obferving gentleman in London writes me word that he faw 
an houfe-martin, on the twenty-third of lafi: OBober, flying in and 
out of it's rieft in the Borough. And 1 myfelf, on the twenty- 
ninth of laft O^lober (as I was travelling through Oxford), faw four 
or five fwallov;s hovering round and fettling on the roof of the 
county-hofpital. 
Now is it likely that thefe poor little birds (which perhaps had 
not been hatched but a few weeks) fliould, at that late feafon of the 
F 2 year. 
