THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, , 163 
as swallows do, since they never settle on the ground. Young 
ones, overrun with ticks, are sometimes found, under their 
nests, fallen to the ground: the number of vermin rendering 
their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent in this 
village several abject cottages; yet a succession still haunts 
the same unlikely roofs,—a good proof this that the same 
birds return to the same spots. As they must stoop very low 
to get up under these humble eaves, cats lie in wait, and some- 
times catch them on the wing. 
On July sth, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof over the 
nest of a swift. The dam sat in the nest; but so strongly was 
she affected by natural affection for her brood, which she sup- 
posed to be in danger, that, regardless of her own safety, she 
would not stir, but lay sullenly by them, permitting herself to 
be taken in hand. The squab young we brought down and 
placed on the grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and were 
as helpless as a new-born child. While we contemplated their 
naked bodies, their unwieldly disproportioned abdomina, and 
their heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not 
but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a 
little more than a fortnight would be able to dash through the 
air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor; and 
perhaps in their emigration must traverse vast continents and 
oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance 
small birds to their prime of life or state of perfection; while 
the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow 
and tedious ! 
LETTER XXII. 
SELBORNE, Sept. 13th, 1774. 
By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an oppor- 
tunity this summer of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows 
_ ascend and descend through the shaft; but my pleasure in 
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