THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE., Rat 7 
lakes and mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if 
these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the 
case of the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they 
immediately withdraw for a time. A circumstance this much 
more in favor of hiding than migration ; since it is much more 
probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum just at 
hand, than return for a week or two to warmer latitudes. 
The swallow, though called the chimney swallow, by no 
means builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns 
and out-houses against the rafters; and so she did in Virgil’s 
time : . 
“ The twittering swallow suspends its nest from the beams.” 
In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called the barn 
swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no 
chimneys to houses, except they are English-built; in these 
countries she constructs her nest in porches, and gate-ways, 
and galleries, and open halls. 
Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place ; 
as we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old 
well, through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the 
purpose of manure: but in general with us this Hrwndo breeds 
in chimneys; and loves to haunt those stacks where there is a 
constant fire, no doubt for the sake of warmth. Not that it 
can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a fire; but 
prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the 
perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with 
some degree of wonder. 
Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little 
bird begin to form her nest about the middle of May, which 
consists, like that of the house-martin, of a crust or shell com- 
posed of dirt or mud, mixed with short pieces of straw to 
render it tough and permanent; with this difference, that 
whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric, that of 
