OF S E L B O R N E. 
27 
LETTER X. 
TO THE SAME. 
Augufl; 4, 1767. 
It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours 
whofe ftudies have led them towards the purfuit of natural know- 
ledge : fo that, for want of a companion to quicken my induftry 
and fharpen my attention, I have made but flender progrefs in a 
kind of information to which I have been attached from my child- 
liood. 
As to /wallows (hirvjidines rujlic^e) being found in a torpid ftate 
during the winter in the ifle of Wight, or any part of this country, 
I never heard any fuch account worth attending to. But a clergy- 
man, of an inquifitive turn, affures me, that, when he was a great 
boy, fome workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church 
tower early in the fpring, found two or three fw'ifts (hir undines 
npodes) among the rubbilh, which were, at firft appearance, dead ; 
but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, 
out of his great care to preferve them, he put them in a paper-bag, 
and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were fuffocated. 
Another intelligent perfon has informed me that, while he was a 
fchoolboy at Brighthelniftone, in Su[fex, a great fragment of the 
chalk-cliff fell down one ftormy winter on the beach ; and that 
many people found /wallows among the rubbifh : bur, on my 
queflioning him whether he faw any of thofe birds himfelf ; to 
my no fmall difappointment, he anfwered me in tlie negative ; 
but that others affured him they did. 
E 2, Yonng 
