THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ‘ 23 
How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly 
the same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave 
us before the middle of August invariably, while the latter stay 
often till the middle of October. And once I saw numbers of 
house-martins on the 7th November. ‘The martins and red- 
wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an uncommon 
'assemblage of summer and winter birds ! 
[Writing nearly twenty-one years later (March 23rd, 1788), 
White gives us, in his Odservations on Nature, the following 
additional notes on the swallows : — 
“A gentleman, who was this week on a visit at Waverley, 
took the opportunity of examining some of the holes in the 
sand-banks with which that district abounds. As these are 
undoubtedly bored by bank martins, and are the places where 
they avowedly breed, he was in hopes they might have slept 
there also, and that he might have surprised them just as they 
were awaking from their winter slumbers. When he had dug 
for some time, he found the holes were horizontal and serpen- 
tine, as I had observed before; and that the nests were 
deposited at the inner end, and had been occupied by broods 
in former summers, but no torpid birds were to be found. He 
opened and examined about a dozen holes. Another gentle- 
man made the same search many years ago, with as little 
success. ‘These holes were in depth about two feet. 
“March 21st, 1790. A single bank or sand-martin was seen 
hovering and playing round the sand-pit at Short Heath, where 
in the summer they abound. 
“ April gth, 1793. A sober hind assures us, that this day, 
on Wishhanger common between Hedleigh and Frinsham, he 
_ saw several bank martins playing in and out, and hanging 
before some nest-holes in a sand-hill, where these birds usually 
nestle. 
“The incident confirms my suspicions, that this species of 
hirundo is to be seen first of any; and gives great reason to 
