32 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE., 
help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow 
kind which ‘assemble in those parts. But what struck me 
most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, for- 
saking the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in 
the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting 
towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give 
some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of 
their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much 
persuaded of that fact, that he talks in his “‘ Calendar of Flora ” 
as familiarly of the swallow’s going under water in the begin- 
ning of September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a 
little before sunset. 
An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he 
saw a house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying 
in and out of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, on the 
twenty-ninth of last October (as I was travelling through 
Oxford), saw four or five swallows hovering round and settling 
on the roof of the county hospital. 
Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps 
had not been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late 
season of the year, and from so midland a county, attempt a 
voyage to Goree or Senegal, almost as far as the equator? 
I acquiesce entirely in your opinion — that, though most of 
the swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind 
and hide with us during the winter. 
As to the short-winged, soft-billed birds, which come trooping 
in such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to 
suspect about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and 
saw them abound till about Michaelmas, when they appeared 
no longer. Subsist they cannot openly among us, and yet 
elude the eyes of the inquisitive: and, as to their hiding, no 
man pretends to have found any of them in a torpid state in 
the winter. But with regard to their migration, what difficul- 
ties attend that supposition — that such feeble bad fliers (who 
