OF SELBORNE. 
This fpccies feeds much on httle coleoptera, as well as on gnats 
and flies ; and often fettles on dug ground, or paths, for gravels 
to grind and digeft it's food. Before they depart, for fome weeks, 
to a bird, they forfake houfes and chimnies, and rooft in trees ; 
and ufually withdraw about the beginning of OSJokr ; though 
fome few ftragglers may appear on at times till the fiiil week in 
November. 
Some few pairs haunt the new and open ftreets of London next 
the fields, but do not enter, like the houfe-martin, the clofe and 
crowded parts of the city. 
Both male and female are diftinguifhed from their congeners by 
the length and forkednefs of their tails. They are undoubtedly 
the moft nimble of all the fpecies : and when the male purfues the 
female in amorous chafe, they then go beyond their ufual fpeed, 
and exert a rapidity almoft too quick for the eye to follow. 
After this circumftantial detail of the life and difcerning trrofyn 
of the fwallow, I ihall add, for your farther amufement, an anecdote 
or two not much in favour of her fagacity : — 
A certain fwallow built for two years together on the handles of 
a pair of garden-fliears, that were ftuck up againft the boards in an 
out-houfe, and therefore muft have her nell fpoiled whenever that 
implement was wanted : and, what is ftranger ftill, another bird 
of the fame fpecies built it's neft on the wings and body of an owl 
that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter 
of a barn. This owl, with the neft on it's wings, and with eggs 
in the neft, was brought as a curiofity worthy the moft elegant 
private mufeum in Great-Britain. The owner, ftruck with the 
oddity of the fight, furniftied the bringer with a large fhell, or 
conch, defiring him to fix it juft where the owl hung : the per- 
fon did as he was ordered, and the following year a pair, pro- 
Z 2 bably 
